Building a digital copy stand

I'm wanting to build myself a copy stand to take clean pictures of
paper and book pages. Scanners don't do a good job with bound books,
especially paperbacks with solid glued spines. The only scanner I know
of that handles books at all well (Mustek OpticBook 3600) is outside my
price range for this project.

Experimenting with my camera (Canon A640) hand-held, I find I need a
glass sheet to keep the book page flattened but I get reflections from
the glass appearing in the final image.

Can anyone give me ideas on how build a copy stand that will give me
scanner-like quality output? How do I arrange lighting so that the paper
is evenly illuminated with no glare?
--
To reply, my gmail address is nojay1 Robert Sneddon

On Dec 17, 5:39 am, Robert Sneddon wrote:
I'm wanting to build myself a copy stand to take clean pictures of
paper and book pages. Scanners don't do a good job with bound books,
especially paperbacks with solid glued spines. The only scanner I know
of that handles books at all well (Mustek OpticBook 3600) is outside my
price range for this project.

Experimenting with my camera (Canon A640) hand-held, I find I need a
glass sheet to keep the book page flattened but I get reflections from
the glass appearing in the final image.

Can anyone give me ideas on how build a copy stand that will give me
scanner-like quality output? How do I arrange lighting so that the paper
is evenly illuminated with no glare?

New copy stands can be very expensive. I would look for a used one,
or try to find an old trash enlarger to adapt to this purpose. You
are on your own with the light sources.

When copying stuff on a copy stand, reflections are particularly
difficult to deal with when you have a a subject with very dark areas,
because the cover glass will act like a "black mirror", as you might
have noticed. You will see faint reflections of the camera and even
the lettering on the front of the lens, and if the camera is very
close to the subject, these can be really troublesome.

A couple of things I learned about lighting like this, in my years of
making university class slides of stuff from textbooks, charts, etc.::

1)* To minimize reflections of the camera off of the cover glass, cut
a hole in the center of a black card and fit it over the lens of the
camera. It helped me, too, to black out any writing on the front of
the lens (with a marker, in my case). If you have a light-colored and
relatively low ceiling (as I did) you might have to make the card big
enough to completely cover your subject, thereby eliminating
reflections from the ceiling itself (which will show up as a
silhouette of the camera, cable release (I was using film cameras) and
the copy stand arm. Finally, raise the camera as high as you can
above the subject to further minimize reflection; i.e., use the 29mm
focal length if you can get away with it.

2) A very simple and almost foolproof way to insure that your optical
axis is exactly perpendicular to the subject plane (thereby rendering
the subject as rectilinear as possible) is to put a small mirror on
top of the subject and adjust the camera so that the reflection of the
lens is dead-center in the viewfinder. It would be best to use the
LCD display for this, because of parallax error when using the optical
viewfinder (SLRs, of course, do not present this problem).

3) The farther away your lights are from the subject, the easier it is
to get even illumination across the plane. You might encounter
difficulties with larger subjects, depending on your setup.

*Of course you can go with cross-polarization between the lights and
the lens, but I am not sure this would be up your alley. You would
have to polarize each light source close to ninety degrees from the
polarizing lens filter. You can probably get polarizing gels for the
light sources, but I am not sure how expensive this would be.

HTH.

--
YOP...

Nicko

On Dec 17, 6:39 am, Robert Sneddon wrote:
I'm wanting to build myself a copy stand to take clean pictures of
paper and book pages. Scanners don't do a good job with bound books,
especially paperbacks with solid glued spines. The only scanner I know
of that handles books at all well (Mustek OpticBook 3600) is outside my
price range for this project.

Experimenting with my camera (Canon A640) hand-held, I find I need a
glass sheet to keep the book page flattened but I get reflections from
the glass appearing in the final image.

Can anyone give me ideas on how build a copy stand that will give me
scanner-like quality output? How do I arrange lighting so that the paper
is evenly illuminated with no glare?
--
To reply, my gmail address is nojay1 Robert Sneddon


I agree with a lot of what Nick said, but I found using polarizers
really helps with the glare. Kaiser copystands are quite good for the
price, should be less than a grand with lights, polarizing filters
etc. Polaroid and Bencher make decent big copy stands, these are
available used, sometimes for a good price, but remember a full set up
was 2-3K in the '80s. I liked the Bencher lights better, I belive the
company is still in business, they had a great polarizing system.
Oxberry and Forox made high end systems, over 10k new but I saw an
Oxberry copy stand for $500 on Craigs list.
Books are tough to photograph for the same reason as they are tough to
scan, the type flows too close to the gutter making a flat photo
difficult, impossible in some situations. For the reasons nick gave I
aways tried not to use glass, spring clamps helped a lot, you can also
use non glare glass, may soften the type a little. Keep lighting at 45
degrees or lower, use polarizers, the black card in front of the
camera doesn't hurt either. I have had customers who suggest I cut the
pages out of a book, have received disassembled books to shoot. Did
this for years, in hospitals and freelance, now I work almost all
digital.

Good luck
Tom

On Dec 17, 7:48 am, tomm42 wrote:

I have had customers who suggest I cut the
pages out of a book, have received disassembled books to shoot. Did
this for years, in hospitals and freelance, now I work almost all
digital.

Shooting photos that are really close to the gutter of a book is
indeed a bitch. I have had professors ask me to check books out of
the med school library so they could note which figures they wanted
copied. Upon seeing some of the results, they would ask "Well, why
can't you just cut the page out of the book? You can tape it back in
when you're done."

I had to politely explain that I would only do this if the book had
been checked out using *their* ID card. None of them minded doing
this in the least (hey, *you're* the "Doctor" with a capital D).
Sheesh. I never did hear about any of it getting back to them,
though. Go figure.

Spring clamps are indeed a good option in some cases, as Tom
suggests. Also, I might have suggested that if you must use glass, a
really heavy slab of glass is a Good Thing to have on hand. I found,
though, that sometimes that I had to use a CC 05 magenta filter
because of the greenish cast (esp. in the highlights) from the glass
(hey, this was slide film I was using).

--
YOP...

Robert Sneddon wrote:
I'm wanting to build myself a copy stand to take clean pictures of
paper and book pages. Scanners don't do a good job with bound books,
especially paperbacks with solid glued spines. The only scanner I know
of that handles books at all well (Mustek OpticBook 3600) is outside my
price range for this project.

Experimenting with my camera (Canon A640) hand-held, I find I need a
glass sheet to keep the book page flattened but I get reflections from
the glass appearing in the final image.

Can anyone give me ideas on how build a copy stand that will give me
scanner-like quality output? How do I arrange lighting so that the paper
is evenly illuminated with no glare?

I can "add" that (as I'm sure you've seen)
you can make a book holder that will hold
the book "half open", and shoot one of the pages.

http://www.internet-marketing-kent.c...k-scanning.jpg

Then use image processing software to get
the proportions right (the width/depth
ratio will be altered by doing this).

You may also want to use a long-ish lens to
get rid of aberations (although these
can also be removed in post processing).
Say 80mm in 35mm terms.

BgBear

Nervous Nick wrote in news:365fe309-f1d9-47cb-
:

On Dec 17, 5:39 am, Robert Sneddon wrote:
I'm wanting to build myself a copy stand to take clean pictures of
paper and book pages. Scanners don't do a good job with bound books,
especially paperbacks with solid glued spines. The only scanner I know
of that handles books at all well (Mustek OpticBook 3600) is outside my
price range for this project.

Experimenting with my camera (Canon A640) hand-held, I find I need a
glass sheet to keep the book page flattened but I get reflections from
the glass appearing in the final image.

Can anyone give me ideas on how build a copy stand that will give me
scanner-like quality output? How do I arrange lighting so that the paper
is evenly illuminated with no glare?

New copy stands can be very expensive. I would look for a used one,
or try to find an old trash enlarger to adapt to this purpose. You
are on your own with the light sources.

When copying stuff on a copy stand, reflections are particularly
difficult to deal with when you have a a subject with very dark areas,
because the cover glass will act like a "black mirror", as you might
have noticed. You will see faint reflections of the camera and even
the lettering on the front of the lens, and if the camera is very
close to the subject, these can be really troublesome.

A couple of things I learned about lighting like this, in my years of
making university class slides of stuff from textbooks, charts, etc.::

1)* To minimize reflections of the camera off of the cover glass, cut
a hole in the center of a black card and fit it over the lens of the
camera. It helped me, too, to black out any writing on the front of
the lens (with a marker, in my case). If you have a light-colored and
relatively low ceiling (as I did) you might have to make the card big
enough to completely cover your subject, thereby eliminating
reflections from the ceiling itself (which will show up as a
silhouette of the camera, cable release (I was using film cameras) and
the copy stand arm. Finally, raise the camera as high as you can
above the subject to further minimize reflection; i.e., use the 29mm
focal length if you can get away with it.

2) A very simple and almost foolproof way to insure that your optical
axis is exactly perpendicular to the subject plane (thereby rendering
the subject as rectilinear as possible) is to put a small mirror on
top of the subject and adjust the camera so that the reflection of the
lens is dead-center in the viewfinder. It would be best to use the
LCD display for this, because of parallax error when using the optical
viewfinder (SLRs, of course, do not present this problem).

3) The farther away your lights are from the subject, the easier it is
to get even illumination across the plane. You might encounter
difficulties with larger subjects, depending on your setup.

*Of course you can go with cross-polarization between the lights and
the lens, but I am not sure this would be up your alley. You would
have to polarize each light source close to ninety degrees from the
polarizing lens filter. You can probably get polarizing gels for the
light sources, but I am not sure how expensive this would be.

HTH.

--
YOP...

Nicko




I've not viewed this website in quite a while.
Previously, nearly all the samples provided evidence of bleed-through from
the back pages.

A bit pricy for most budgets:
http://www.atiz.com/
http://diy.atiz.com/diy_samples.php

On Dec 18, 5:19 am, Don wrote:
Nervous wrote in news:365fe309-f1d9-47cb-
:



On Dec 17, 5:39 am, Robert Sneddon wrote:
I'm wanting to build myself a copy stand to take clean pictures of
paper and book pages. Scanners don't do a good job with bound books,
especially paperbacks with solid glued spines. The only scanner I know
of that handles books at all well (Mustek OpticBook 3600) is outside my
price range for this project.

Experimenting with my camera (Canon A640) hand-held, I find I need a
glass sheet to keep the book page flattened but I get reflections from
the glass appearing in the final image.

Can anyone give me ideas on how build a copy stand that will give me
scanner-like quality output? How do I arrange lighting so that the paper
is evenly illuminated with no glare?

New copy stands can be very expensive. I would look for a used one,
or try to find an old trash enlarger to adapt to this purpose. You
are on your own with the light sources.

When copying stuff on a copy stand, reflections are particularly
difficult to deal with when you have a a subject with very dark areas,
because the cover glass will act like a "black mirror", as you might
have noticed. You will see faint reflections of the camera and even
the lettering on the front of the lens, and if the camera is very
close to the subject, these can be really troublesome.

A couple of things I learned about lighting like this, in my years of
making university class slides of stuff from textbooks, charts, etc.::

1)* To minimize reflections of the camera off of the cover glass, cut
a hole in the center of a black card and fit it over the lens of the
camera. It helped me, too, to black out any writing on the front of
the lens (with a marker, in my case). If you have a light-colored and
relatively low ceiling (as I did) you might have to make the card big
enough to completely cover your subject, thereby eliminating
reflections from the ceiling itself (which will show up as a
silhouette of the camera, cable release (I was using film cameras) and
the copy stand arm. Finally, raise the camera as high as you can
above the subject to further minimize reflection; i.e., use the 29mm
focal length if you can get away with it.

2) A very simple and almost foolproof way to insure that your optical
axis is exactly perpendicular to the subject plane (thereby rendering
the subject as rectilinear as possible) is to put a small mirror on
top of the subject and adjust the camera so that the reflection of the
lens is dead-center in the viewfinder. It would be best to use the
LCD display for this, because of parallax error when using the optical
viewfinder (SLRs, of course, do not present this problem).

3) The farther away your lights are from the subject, the easier it is
to get even illumination across the plane. You might encounter
difficulties with larger subjects, depending on your setup.

*Of course you can go with cross-polarization between the lights and
the lens, but I am not sure this would be up your alley. You would
have to polarize each light source close to ninety degrees from the
polarizing lens filter. You can probably get polarizing gels for the
light sources, but I am not sure how expensive this would be.

HTH.

--
YOP...

Nicko

I've not viewed this website in quite a while.
Previously, nearly all the samples provided evidence of bleed-through from
the back pages.

A bit pricy for most budgets:http://www.atiz.com/http://diy.atiz.com/diy_samples.php


That's a very good point, and excellent examples! I found that simply
inserting a black piece of paper behind the page being photographed
was usually a sufficient fix.

--
YOP...

Nervous Nick wrote:

That's a very good point, and excellent examples! I found that simply
inserting a black piece of paper behind the page being photographed
was usually a sufficient fix.

Yeah; I bought some sheets of matt black cardboard for this;
works rather well.

BugBear

On Dec 18, 7:09 am, bugbear wrote:
Nervous Nick wrote:

That's a very good point, and excellent examples! I found that simply
inserting a black piece of paper behind the page being photographed
was usually a sufficient fix.

Yeah; I bought some sheets of matt black cardboard for this;
works rather well.

BugBear


To get rid of bleed through when copying or scanning a black sheet of
paper, have used school construction paper or solid black sheets from
our laser printer. Have a file on my computer called "black.pdf" that
is just for that.
The rig that flattened the book and kept a V shape looks like a b****
to light. Leitz had a book flattener too, but it is rare and
considered a collectors item so it is too expensive. The Atiz unit
looks better but is the camera bracket designed for a DSLR, a P&S or
their camera didn't get a good feeling on that. Also is it just for
copying whole pages or can you get individual images, chart and
graphs, really looked too rigid.

Tom

On Dec 17, 6:39 am, Robert Sneddon wrote:
I'm wanting to build myself a copy stand to take clean pictures of
paper and book pages. Scanners don't do a good job with bound books,
especially paperbacks with solid glued spines. The only scanner I know
of that handles books at all well (Mustek OpticBook 3600) is outside my
price range for this project.

Experimenting with my camera (Canon A640) hand-held, I find I need a
glass sheet to keep the book page flattened but I get reflections from
the glass appearing in the final image.

Can anyone give me ideas on how build a copy stand that will give me
scanner-like quality output? How do I arrange lighting so that the paper
is evenly illuminated with no glare?
--
To reply, my gmail address is nojay1 Robert Sneddon

I've had good luck with a simple arrangement. I've either clamped a
tripod horizontally to a shelf above the work surface or, in a pinch,
used the tripod with one leg longer than the other, with the camera
pointing straight down at the book between the tripod legs. In either
case, I've used two lamps on both sides of the book, shining at 45%
angles, for both even illumination and avoiding glare. Bleed-through
from the back of the page really hasn't been a problem--it's very
faint, not enough to interfere with OCR or reading the page images
visually.

The trick for OCR is to hold the book flat while shooting (curled
pages confuse OCR -- or at least they do the version I'm using). I
use one hand to hold the book and the other for the shutter button. A
foot triggered shutter release of some kind would be very handy, but
I've never gone that far. Still, I've gotten good enough at it that
the page images can be shot at one every 5 secons or so and OCR'ed
successfully.