Fresnel Lens Magnifiers: technical

Featured in Your Family Tree magazine June 2007 with an article on Family Tree Folk Genealogist Fresnel Lens Magnifiers!

Having trouble reading those census returns, wills, photographs and old documents? Our range of portable Fresnel lens magnifiers can now help you get a better close up to decipher that hard to read and often frustrating handwriting or small print. Ideal low vision aids.

Ideal for use at home, taking with you to the record office to help with your research or anywhere as Fresnel lenses are all flexible, lightweight and unbreakable. Optical acrylic Fresnel lenses are ultra-thin at only 0.4mm.

We offer five sizes and once you have tried them you will not want to be without one close and handy. Keep one in the car for map reading on the way to the record office! Or for the bus or train timetable! See below for more technical details on how fresnel lens magnifiers work and their potential uses!

Family History Societies discount deals - If you want to buy bulk quantities of Fresnel Lens Magnifiers to sell at your meetings, please contact us at We can offer discounts offering a good return for the society and allowing your members easy access to these useful research aids. We can also give you a discounted postage cost.

The technical bit!

A Fresnel magnifying lens is able to produce a magnified image because it contains a series of concentric grooves that are integral to the surface of the thin acrylic sheet that makes up the lens. In a normal magnifying glass, the piece of glass acts as a single lens, bending parallel rays of light to a common focal length. In the fresnel lens, the concentric grooves all act as tiny lenses to bend parallel light with the same effect.

The deeper the grooves in the fresnel lens, the greater its ability to magnify. But, image quality is only retained at up to x5 magnification, so fresnel lens magnifiers tend to be either approx. x3 or x4 magnification. At these levels of magnification, clarity is excellent and this magnification is ideal for reading small or difficult to read print.

This makes fresnel lens magnifiers ideal for close work - genealogy, reading handwritten documents, reading contracts, terms and conditions, maps, bus and train timetables, reading books, doing crosswords, reading food labels and drug warning labels.

Page size magnifier only £4.99 With black vinyl frame