A lens system for collecting and focusing light emanating from an object has a cuvette housing the object and having a wall of thickness not greater than 1.5 millimeters; a plano-convex lens having a planar surface affixed to the wall; a sequence of at least three meniscus lenses, each meniscus lens having a concave surface toward the object and a convex surface, each successive meniscus lens receiving the light from the immediately preceding meniscus lens and having radii of curvature of its concave and convex surfaces greater than corresponding radii of the preceding meniscus lens; and at least one compound lens that may be a doublet lens or a triplet lens, the compound lens receiving the light from a last meniscus lens, wherein an image of a geometrical point on the object has a root-mean square spot size equal to or less than 63 .mu.m.