Smartphone in the enlarger

[Pieter12]

I recently read about a photographer who was using an iPhone in the negative stage of his enlarger. It sounded like a fascinating technique to try. Has anyone here done this?

 

[radiant]

I have. Works fine for small prints.

 

[Pieter12]

I might try an iPad with a 150mm lens & see how it comes out.

 

[radiant]

I might try an iPad with a 150mm lens & see how it comes out.

I don't know what lens is that but probably the image circle won't cover the whole iPad? That cuts don't the effective PPI and that way reduces enlarging amount.

My iPad is 2160×1620 pixels at 264 ppi. iPhone 13 is 2532×1170px at 460 ppi. I would pick iPhone because that would require 150mm image circle to fit whole screen.

 

[Pieter12]

The choice of 150mm is because that is what is needed for a 4x5 negative, the biggest my enalrger can handle. I would need to limit thie image size to that area, sacrificing a lot of the iPad's screen. But maybe a shorter lens with an iphone might work out as well, treating it as a 6x9 negative. We'll see.

 

[Buzz-01]

Coincidentally I've tried it briefly yesterday at the end of a darkroom session, just for fun, and failed miserably...
First tried a contact print, which became one blurry mess. Possibly due to the glass screen protector on my phone, increasing the distance between lcd and paper too much.
Then I put my phone in the negative tray of my enlarger and my touchscreen went bananas on me. Ghost touches made it impossible to keep the inverted image steady on my phone.

I didn't make any serious attempts, just wanted to see what would happen. Perhaps some kind of plastic spacer could be of help here, but it was already late so I called it a day.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Yes. Did it a few years back with my students. It surprisingly worked well. Kids just had to make sure that they could invert an image on their phone.