[jackbrown]

A cheap scanner at 300 dpi (black and white!) and software like Abbyy Finereader is all you need for this. Scanning, OCRing and PDFing a book takes a couple of hours. I do it all the time; you can read something else while you do it.

If you're going to use recycledelectron's method, try to figure out a way to quickly turn the images black and white (not grayscale!) as early in the process as possible, and turn the autofocus off; I used a setup like the one he describes for scanning a rare book, and took color pictures (big mistake); also didn't have good enough lighting for a really high contrast ratio. The resulting images basically sucked and I had a nightmarish time making the ebook. It'd be great if your camera could capture in black and white, but it almost certainly can't, so make sure you white balance it against a blank page in the room you are capturing in, then transform the captured files into bw before you OCR. Good luck, and like I said, I think a cheapo scanner is more practical, unless you need really large format captures.