Quote:
Originally Posted by Studio717
ereszet,
Thank you for this! I'm considering making a cradle out of foam core. Plenty of strength and yet easy to cut (at least I'm hoping so - on both counts). I have both an old copy stand and a small light tent, so once the cradle is built, it should be a matter of putting it all together and tweaking.
I'm looking forward to your next 'installment'. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
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A foam cradle should work with two improvements.
1. Glue it to a heavy base, so that it doesn't move easily.
2. Make some wedge panels of different angles (the foam should be ok for that) to put them either under or over the cradle to avoid trapezoidal/perspective effect. The v-cradle should be at an angle greater than 45 degrees to make it possible to use the wedges. The wedges can make the angle smaller but not larger, unless you put them under the cradle at the opposite side of the book page (in that case you can use anything, e.g. for my cheap and dirty cradle I used books of various thickness under one end of the cradle to change the angle.
Attach the pictures of your setup, when it is ready.
For my do-it-yourself v-cradle I am going to add four bolt legs, to regulate precisely the horizontal position of the v-panels to match that of the camera lens. In theory a small level tool should help to get both the camera and the cradle in the right horizontal position, but in practice the camera postion changes a little when you fasten the ball head (unless you buy a precise and expensive 3-dimensional ball head for your tripod or copy stand). That is why a preview on a computer screen is the only way to make sure that the picture is a perfect rectangle.