MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - do-it yourself repro v-cradle for paper books

Studio717 · 10-04-2007, 02:36 PM

I've done some research on the web about cradles and discovered that rare book libraries use several different kinds, including book pillows. I'm going to do some experiments (I hope this weekend) to see if these alternatives will work for this type of 'scanning'.

My camera is a 7.1 megapixel Olympus C-7070 with a good macro capability. I'm hoping it will work. I have a remote for it, which will help I think, but the software I'm going to have to look into further. No doubt the solution will be PC only, which is always annoying but not a deal killer. (I usually use Macs, but I have PCs.)

For OCRing I usually just use Acrobat. I used to use a version of Iris but there were limitations that I just didn't want to deal with (they are probably gone in later versions, but I haven't looked). I've also used Omnipage in the past, but not at all recently. My biggest issue is that for many books OCRing is a waste of time. The 18th century long 's' totally, uh, messes up the results.

I'll be printing out ereszet's instructions and trying to replicate with on-hand equipment before buying (or building) new stuff. This looks like a great solution to the problem of scanning page by page in a scanner, even one as useful as the Opticbook (also PC only

).

10-04-2007, 02:36 PM	#33
Studio717 Addict Posts: 208 Karma: 575 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: California Device: Various Kindles, iPhone, iPad, Galaxy 10.1	I've done some research on the web about cradles and discovered that rare book libraries use several different kinds, including book pillows. I'm going to do some experiments (I hope this weekend) to see if these alternatives will work for this type of 'scanning'. My camera is a 7.1 megapixel Olympus C-7070 with a good macro capability. I'm hoping it will work. I have a remote for it, which will help I think, but the software I'm going to have to look into further. No doubt the solution will be PC only, which is always annoying but not a deal killer. (I usually use Macs, but I have PCs.) For OCRing I usually just use Acrobat. I used to use a version of Iris but there were limitations that I just didn't want to deal with (they are probably gone in later versions, but I haven't looked). I've also used Omnipage in the past, but not at all recently. My biggest issue is that for many books OCRing is a waste of time. The 18th century long 's' totally, uh, messes up the results. I'll be printing out ereszet's instructions and trying to replicate with on-hand equipment before buying (or building) new stuff. This looks like a great solution to the problem of scanning page by page in a scanner, even one as useful as the Opticbook (also PC only ).