Quote:
Originally Posted by user
mm what about barrel distortion, white balance, color distortions that are common in cameras?
scanners have minimum artifacts (mainly from dust) and inexisting distortion
I dont have an opinion about camera scanning at the moment, I just collect facts and most photographers say it wont work or it will be too much job for such a bad quality
I hope G9 will be enough and I will come back with positive feedback
the atiz supported cameras are +1k USD
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1. I see no barrel distortion when shooting A5-A4 formats. I see sometimes darker edges, which can be avoided by changing the camera zoom. White balance is the problem of lighting and your perception. All the digital cameras I have, provide white balance settings for several different light conditions (daylight, fluorescent, tungsten, automatic) and a possibilty to set the parameters based on your shooting of what you believe is a white page (or a Kodak gray sheet). If your light is uniform you can easily correct white balance in RAW photos or even in jpg (see Picasa). Color depends on the mode settings in the camera. I recommend neutral (no processing inside the camera) mode. You can match the colors to your taste in a number of photo processing programs (Picasa included). Scanners need as much color attention and postprocessing as digital cameras. And yes, the scanners (especially the ones in the range of $100) distort images, because of non uniform speed of their CCD or other sensor bar. As for white balance, most of the time the white from a scanner looks white but not always, and you have no means to adjust it in the scanning process (I do not refer to high end costly scanners)
2. Most photographers dismissed digital cameras a few years ago. Times change.
3. Your Powershot G9 should be more than enough for the job. My first digital scanning camera was G5 (5 Mpixels) and was quite good for A4 format sheets and OCR. Unfortunately, Canon makes some strange marketing moves. They removed raw mode from G7 (fortunately it is back in G9), but they also removed a flexible, rotating LCD screen (which is still available on a cheaper A640). That, and also the lack of a pop-up flash in G-series, is the reason why I stay since 2004 with my Powershot Pro 1 and wonder why Canon doesn't want my money for Pro 2.
4. As for Atiz DIY BookDrive, they provide support only for selected cameras, because they are not in the camera business. Canon cameras come with the software to shoot from the computer, and some come with infrared remote. An independent developer of Breeze Systems sells the PSremote program that works with practically all Canon cameras, and is much more convenient than the Canon software.