Quote:
Originally Posted by user
as for my scanner suggestion, I think we are close:
the HP 4670 scanner is only 0.75 inches thick -> scanning of book pages while having the book opened as minimum as possible
the Microtek s280 scanner has almost no margin (the plastic margin outside the glass scanning area) -> full page scanning without any distortion near the book spine
if we could combine the features of the two above, we will have a scanner that can be placed between book pages almost as a paper and it will scan the pages while having the book almost closed and without any distortion near the spine
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One company that is innovative and capable of constructing a v-shaped scanner based repro station is Atiz.
They already offer an automatic book scanner called BookDrive and a manual photo scanner called BookDrive DIY, so they have knowledge and technical skills to combine the two in a v-shaped scanner. But don't hold your breath yet.
Each solution has its advantages and disadvantages. The BookDrive is automatic but is only suitable for a certain size and thickness of books. The BookDrive DIY is semi-automatic (the v-cradle centers automatically, the shots can be taken automatically, but requires manual rasing of transparent cover and manual turning of pages). Again, the size of books is limited to the design dimensions. To make a v-shaped scanner competitive one would have to use the BookDrive DIY design with full automation, which means additional mechanisms and costs. Scanners are rather slow in scanning (especially higher resolutions and color pages), and automatic raising of the v-shaped scanner would take even more time. So the advantage of scanning 700 pages an hour (as Atiz claims) would have gone. The cost would be in the range of several thousand dollars if not more.
For a home and small office users my flexible v-cradle design has all the advantages with one disadvantage - the manual operation. There are no limits as to the size or thickness of books (you can put a big size cardboard base over v-cradle panels) and the shooting is as fast as you are in turning pages and flattening them with glass (the resolution and color doesn't matter for the speed of camera shooting). Once you set your lighting conditions right (you may experiment with a black tent to prevent any extra lights or shadows) the quality of reproductions is good enough even for professional applications. Several hundred OCR quality photos per hour is possible.