Today a small how to for photographers and enthusiasts in need for a light box to view slides (transparencies) or old photo negatives. Semi professional photographers own a light box (or a light table) to view slides. But you can use your android smartphone or tablet pc for this purpose.
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Recently I was in need to digitalize some slides for my (German) Japan blog. My old HP Scanjet 4470C-Scanner with an adapter to scan slides has been out of order due to lack of Windows 7 WIA drivers. In normal cases I use a slide projector, to draw the slides to a shoe box covered with a white paper sheet. Then I use a digital camera, to that a photo of the projected slide. But that is time consuming, I need to unpack the slide projector within a dark room, and take my digital camera on tripod. My idea was, to use a smartphone and an app, to use it as a light table (light box) for my slides, and take a digital camera to create digital copies of my slides. For web publishing the resolution should be good enough …
I found the Android app Lightbox
Searching Google Play Store, I finally found the app Lightbox from SeanR Software. The app promises to control the display of an android device as a white screen – light table, or flashlight. The app provides a full screen white display with a slider to adjust screen brightness. There is a free version of this app, so I gave it a test run. It's sufficient to launch the app on your Android device and place a slide on your devices display.
You can use the slider to adjust the brightness. To view slides (transparencies) or photo negatives, it's sufficient. But my initial idea to use the Android device a a light table and take a digital camera to digitalize the old photos wasn't possible. The display of an Android device is causing a fine grid, and also the photo sensor of a digital camera is build as a grid of pixel. This is causing Moiré patterns within the digital image, so the result is useless.
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Placing a diffuser between the phone screen and the slide should eliminate the phone's grid pattern and the moire.
Hallo Anthony, what kind of diffuser are you using?