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

Maggy · 11-28-2008, 07:36 AM

I've never tried with a film camera, but my experience with those is that the film grain would probably spoil OCR results.

Please watch out for high megapixel claims especially on cheap camera's
-1st: their sensor has often less Mp but the built in software interpolates
-2nd: a cheap tiny 10 Mp sensor gets hot and produces speckling noise while more expensive 5Mp camera's have a larger and better quality sensor that will produce better results. Reports that even a 2Mp phone camera might give acceptable results might for a part be explained because these sensors are probably low energy and the pixels are not as much interfering with one another. I'm still convinced that this is not my personal favourite solution but it is worth a try if you already own such a camera phone. What's perfectly acceptable for some of us is rubbish for others.

I'm studying on the possibility to make a simple portable solution for use in archives and libraries. A kind of suitcase with fold up book stand, fold up camera monopod and battery fed permanent light that is not irritating other library visitors. Flash is in 99% of the cases strictly forbidden, wall sockets are in most cases not available. I'm thinking about something like taking off the TFT from a broken laptop that has still working backlight. I already tried this once, but after taking off the TFT the backlight refused to work as well. I did convert the backlight to 220V, much lighter weight than the entire laptop, but no longer working on batteries. The light quality hovever is the best you can get for this purpose.

All suggestions are welcome.

Instead of glass I'm thinking about using clear film fixed to the back of the book stand, glue a hard plastic edge on the front side and give it some spring hooks. I own some samples of very high quality plastics that should last very long even with high spring tension.

By the way, I have lots of PDF ebooks, looking like full picture facsimile with underlaying OCR text that's so full of errors that text searches hardly give any results. Downloaded from several different libraries and Google Books. I can't find any easy way to show just the text to make corrections. Nor do I know any easy way to redo the OCR job. Advice please!

And does anyone know any software more or less comparable to OCR but for handwritten text? I'm currently doing an awful lot of manual transcription.

KonikaMinolta Dynax/Maxxum 7D is the best camera I know for this kind of work. It's a bit heavy, but it has excellent hardware anti-shake, (most camera's have much worse software shake reduction), one of the best sensors ever made, performs excellent even free hand in low light conditions, easy both manual and automatic controls, software for PC control, interchangeable lenses and the best high resolution camera LCD money can buy. KonikaMiolta no longer exists as a camera builder so if you want one you'll have to find it second hand.

11-28-2008, 07:36 AM	#133
Maggy Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 39 Join Date: Oct 2008 Device: iliad 1	I've never tried with a film camera, but my experience with those is that the film grain would probably spoil OCR results. Please watch out for high megapixel claims especially on cheap camera's -1st: their sensor has often less Mp but the built in software interpolates -2nd: a cheap tiny 10 Mp sensor gets hot and produces speckling noise while more expensive 5Mp camera's have a larger and better quality sensor that will produce better results. Reports that even a 2Mp phone camera might give acceptable results might for a part be explained because these sensors are probably low energy and the pixels are not as much interfering with one another. I'm still convinced that this is not my personal favourite solution but it is worth a try if you already own such a camera phone. What's perfectly acceptable for some of us is rubbish for others. I'm studying on the possibility to make a simple portable solution for use in archives and libraries. A kind of suitcase with fold up book stand, fold up camera monopod and battery fed permanent light that is not irritating other library visitors. Flash is in 99% of the cases strictly forbidden, wall sockets are in most cases not available. I'm thinking about something like taking off the TFT from a broken laptop that has still working backlight. I already tried this once, but after taking off the TFT the backlight refused to work as well. I did convert the backlight to 220V, much lighter weight than the entire laptop, but no longer working on batteries. The light quality hovever is the best you can get for this purpose. All suggestions are welcome. Instead of glass I'm thinking about using clear film fixed to the back of the book stand, glue a hard plastic edge on the front side and give it some spring hooks. I own some samples of very high quality plastics that should last very long even with high spring tension. By the way, I have lots of PDF ebooks, looking like full picture facsimile with underlaying OCR text that's so full of errors that text searches hardly give any results. Downloaded from several different libraries and Google Books. I can't find any easy way to show just the text to make corrections. Nor do I know any easy way to redo the OCR job. Advice please! And does anyone know any software more or less comparable to OCR but for handwritten text? I'm currently doing an awful lot of manual transcription. KonikaMinolta Dynax/Maxxum 7D is the best camera I know for this kind of work. It's a bit heavy, but it has excellent hardware anti-shake, (most camera's have much worse software shake reduction), one of the best sensors ever made, performs excellent even free hand in low light conditions, easy both manual and automatic controls, software for PC control, interchangeable lenses and the best high resolution camera LCD money can buy. KonikaMiolta no longer exists as a camera builder so if you want one you'll have to find it second hand.