Use Your Phone as a Portable Microscope

2 ways to do “microphotography” with your phone

I’ve been working on using my phone as a sort of microscope to take close-up pictures. If you search the internet using “cell phone microscopes” you get all kinds of different ways to do that.

So far I have tried 2 different ways.

The first one was with my hand lens which has an internal light that I can turn on.

I just hold it over the camera lens on my phone and get as steady as I can. You have to hold the phone really steady because the greater the magnification, the more shaky things are for the camera!

Here’s the hand lens I used.

And here’s a few pictures I took with it.

Top left is the outer part of a Dahlia petal. Top right is another garden flower. Bottom left is close-up of flowers on top of sunflower seeds. Bottom right is the hair from a “skunk” fur cap. You can see what I mean about needing to hold it steady!

So that was my first attempt and while not too bad, I think I may get one of these hand lenses* that actually attaches to the phone to help with the shakiness. And it’s a bit stronger.