How to use an Android device as a light box for slides: A beginner's guide

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.

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.

How to use an Android device as a light box for slides

Download File

Yesterday, because it is weekend and I had enough time I wanted to make a selection of slides for sending to scanner but unfortunately my old lightbox was not working due to the power adapter. And here I am put in a position to find an alternative way of viewing the slides easy and comfortable. The simplest and convenient option that I had in mind was to use my tablet as a lightbox. Or rather said as lighttab. With surprise I found that is even more convenient and useful to use the tablet because I can adjust good enough not only the light intensity but the color temperature of light. Well? How about that? Could you do something like that with a classic lightbox?Here is the full article, including photos... -android-tablet-as-lightbox.html

For Hector, yes you have right. It's not like a lightbox in terms of light power, especially in the middle of the day, but I think that's good enough to view your slides standing on a sofa. :) About the comparison that you mentioned, between my proofing display (which is an Eizo FlexScan) and the tablet screen, the tablet is visible brighter.

Converting slides to digital with these devices should not be expensive. Projectors and converters can be found at flea markets and on eBay quite cheaply. Various brands were available---search for "cinelink" to get started.

These are typically replacement lenses, or lens-mounted devices that come with a slot to place slides. Once focused, the devices are the perfect size to get a full, high-definition copy of the image. The slide slot is opaque plastic to diffuse the light source.

You may have tried the suggestions above and decided that what you really need is some dedicated hardware. Various slide scanner devices are available---some are even capable of scanning slides and photographic negatives. It's a smart idea to opt for hardware from reputable photographic brands rather than cheaper alternatives. The KODAK Mini Digital Slide Scanner is a smart solution.

Depending on the size of the tablet screen, line up the negatives or slides side by side to review them easily, then adjust the screen brightness to get the desired result. If you find you can see individual pixels from the screen coming through, try diffusing the light by placing a sheet of tissue or baking paper between the screen and the negatives.

The app's scanner requires a backlight source that will light up the actual image in the slide you're scanning. You can easily open a white screen on a tablet or computer, or use the photomyne.com/backlight link provided in the app. Make sure the device you open the backlight on is set to the highest brightness setting possible.

Light padIf you're having trouble holding your slides steady between the backlight on your computer and your phone, a light pad allows you to lay the slide down flat and focus solely on holding your phone for scanning. That way, you can move swiftly while scanning each image and lay multiple slides on the light pad at once.

Visual LightBox is a free wizard app that helps you easily generate popup image galleries with a terrific lightbox overlay effect, in a few clicks without writing a single line of code. Just drag&drop your photos into online website builder window, press "Publish"and your own picture slideshow with beautiful lightbox effects will openin the browser instantly! No javascript,css,html coding, no image editing, just a click to get your linkin bio ready.Responsive, mobile-ready, unobtrusive, search engine friendly, translated to 31 languages!

lightGallery supports multiple touch gestures to perform specific actions such as pinch to zoom in, zoom out, double tap to zoom, drag or swipe to navigate to different slides, vertical swipe or drag to close etc.

lightGallery keeps only minimal number of slides in the DOM. So, overall performance is not hampered even if you have a very large number of slides. lightGallery loads only 3 slides at a time. Remaining slides are loaded as you navigate to it.

lightGallery hash plugin lets you provide custom unique URLs for each gallery image. This link can be used to share media anywhere on the web. It allows you to navigate to different slides via browser back/forward buttons too.

lightGallery supports, adding, editing, deleting slides even if the gallery is opened. You just need to modify the current gallery items and pass it via updateSlides method. lightGallery will automatically organize the slides for you.

lightGallery is highly optimized for mobile devices. You can use separate settings for mobile devices. lightGallery uses CSS-only approach for resizing images and videos to achieve maximum performance on mobile devices

lightGallery supports keyboard navigation to navigate different slides, and uses escape key to close the gallery, and uses recommended accessibility HTML markups to make lightGallery accessible for keyboard and screen reader users.

lightGallery supports FaceBook and Disqus comments out of the box. The comments plugin lets people comment on slides using their Facebook or Disqus accounts. You can easily add your own comment widget as well.

I have some rather dark old slides I want to scan. I have been using a nikon D810, 60 mm macro lens and an ES-1. Some slides are fine to scan but the darker ones are quite dark. I am looking for a light box with a high or adjustable light intensity. For the moment I am locked in to using an old mac, and iphoto. I know it's inadequate, but bringing my set up, up to the present requires a new mac and new software ( my old OS is too old to support any of the major current software programs and cash is limited for now), Any ideas for a small but bright neutral light box. I will also use it to look at slides so I won't be going the flash route ( haven't bought one yet!) Thanks for any suggestions. Norm

Whatever light source you use be sure to do a Custom WB with your camera before copying any slides. The colors of the copies may still have to be adjusted but at least you will always be starting from a standard WB.

On the Westcott CFL bulbs, I'd be very curious to see some tests using the same slides with a variety of light sources - pro 5500K CFL bulbs such as the Westcott, consumer 5000K CFL bulbs, good electronic flash, tungsten, tablets and phones, and tracing pads such as Artograph Lightpads and the less expensive Chinese Ebay versions. The tracing pads tend to be around 6500K and higher, which has made me shy away from them as I'm concerned there could be issues with achieving full spectrum. But side-by-side comparisons using the same slides would be the best way to test, assuming of course that each light had a custom white balance. 2ff7e9595c