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Old 02-25-2012, 08:32 PM   #1
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Scanner recommendation?

Hello

So far I scanned a few books with my old Canon flatbed scanner. But this one has many disadvantages. The scanner is already about 8 years old (I guess) and it takes about 30 seconds to scan 1 page. And to make it worse: Canon doesn't support it anymore. The last driver version was made for XP (or Vista?) but there is no driver for Windows 7. I can only use it with Vuescan.

So I started looking around for a new scanner, one that allows to scan to the middle (the edge) of the book.

One that looks interesting is the PLUSTEK OpticBook 3600 (or similar Plustek Scanners).

Another one that I noticed is the Microtek XT3300. According to (german) Amazon, it is the worlds fastest scanner - less then 2 seconds for a page. As I said my old one needs about 30 seconds, so less then 2 seconds would be heaven for me. But I never heard of Microtek before, so I don't know if they are good.

So what do you know about this scanners? Which (other) scanner would you recommend? I know some people use cameras, but right now I am only interested in scanners.

Thanks in advance.
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Old 02-26-2012, 12:03 AM   #2
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Are you only going to be using it to scan books?
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Old 02-26-2012, 07:17 AM   #3
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I'd say the scanning part is the easiest. It's pretty much a mindless, repetitive task. I usually listen to music or to an audio book/podcast and check it at the end, page by page, counting the even pages if the book is small enough to get two pages at once. This part is very important and you should definitely take a few minutes to do it.

For me, the other side of the coin - the processing part, takes much longer: proofreading it in ABBYY FineReader, tracking down fonts, vectorizing the cover and various other graphics, doing the layout and proofreading the final product again.

My advice is don't spend more than you have to. Today a scanner around $100 was considered professional-grade only a few years back.
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Old 02-26-2012, 07:42 AM   #4
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If you're willing to cut the books, use anything with a document feed. Doesn't have to be the fastest scanner in the world then as the process is automatic.

Otherwise get a camera and a lamp and build a rig. If you do it right it's fast as you can flip through pages without moving the book, whereas with a scanner you always have to pick the book up flip the page put book back in etc.

Otherwise get a book scanner such as the Plustek. It's still a tedious process scanning a book either way.



Alternatively, just download the book. If you end up having a digital copy of your book without paying either way, does it really matter where the digital copy came from?
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Old 02-26-2012, 05:04 PM   #5
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If you're willing to cut the books, use anything with a document feed. Doesn't have to be the fastest scanner in the world then as the process is automatic.
My father has a scanner with document feed. I already got some cheap books from ebay (like 1€-2€ or $1-$2) and cut them apart, but some other books that I want to convert to ebooks are still to expensive. I mean, a used book that is like 1-2 years old still costs almost the same as a new book. And sometimes, I borrow books from the public library - I guess they wouldn't be too happy, if I cut their books. And some other books that I want to scan are very old and rare.

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Otherwise get a camera and a lamp and build a rig. If you do it right it's fast as you can flip through pages without moving the book, whereas with a scanner you always have to pick the book up flip the page put book back in etc.

Otherwise get a book scanner such as the Plustek. It's still a tedious process scanning a book either way.
Since I already own a good camera, I also thought about that. But for some reasons, I think it wouldn't be the right thing for me. I already tried to build a rig (I know there is a good site who shows different rigs) out of cardboard as a beginning, but you still need to put a glass plate on top of it, to hold the pages down.


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Alternatively, just download the book. If you end up having a digital copy of your book without paying either way, does it really matter where the digital copy came from?
I would if I could. But many books are still not available as ebooks. There is a successful series of 7 books that I already own as paper books - but I want to read them on my e-reader. I contacted the publishing company and asked if they plan on releasing this books as digital versions. But they said "no".

Now I know that there are some ebook-pirates who rip the DRM off from existing ebooks and publish them for free - some of them even scan books on their own. But still, there are many books that are not available for download. I don't want to scan them just for fun, I do that, because they aren't available in any other form.
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Old 03-29-2012, 06:43 AM   #6
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I am still not sure what scanner I should get.

After some googling, I found another scanner that looks interesting, the Avision FB2280E. It is also a book scanner and as far as I heard they are also pretty good.

Has anyone any experience with this company in general and especially the FB2280E?
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Old 03-30-2012, 05:15 PM   #7
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Having built a couple of scanning rigs. I can say that the cardboard box rig--although it works and gives ok results if you're just doing one or two books--building something more solid that supports both the book and the camera gives way better scans.

I haven't heard anything about those scanners (have you tried asking at the DIY Book Scanner site? Someone there might have some insights), but I can say that almost anything made now would be way faster with better quality than your 8 year old scanner, I scanned one book with my cheap 99 dollar all in one printer/scanner, and I was getting one scan every 10 seconds (including page turns) with outstanding results.
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Old 04-05-2012, 05:56 AM   #8
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O.k. in case someone else besides me is also interested in a bookscanner ...

in the current issue of the german computermagazine c't (release date was March, 26th, 2012) is a test with all the 3 scanners (Avision FB2280E, Plustek Optibook 33800 and Microtek XT3300) plus 2 camera type scanners.

The magazine doesn't give a final rating, but personally (and based on this test) I have decided myself for the Avision. Now all I need is the money to buy it ...
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Old 04-05-2012, 06:43 AM   #9
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$400 seems a bit steep.

I use an Epson Perfection V33 scanner (link), which I think is an excellent model. It can "see" between pages without any blurriness, even though the sensor is not as close to the spine as with other scanners. But it's ok, you're probably not going to be scanning comic books or magazines anyway (that's the main advantage of those types of scanners) and even if you do, you can probably crop them just fine. Like I said, the processing part is a much more involved process. At 300 dpi the quality is pretty good and I only use 600 dpi for covers or various other elements. The results are great for OCR-ing and vectorizing.
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Old 04-06-2012, 08:13 PM   #10
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There is another thing that I discovered today.

So far I knew 3 ways of scanning a book. With a camera, a flatbed scanner, or (if I destroy the book) with an adf scanner.

But today I was flipping through a computer catalog and saw a handheld scanner for 70€ (about $90). The first ever scanner I had was a handheld scanner, but that one was totally different. It was as big as a DVD case, with a cable that was always in the way.

But this new kind of handheld scanner is very small - about 10 inch long and about 1.6inch wide (about 25cmx4cm), the maximum scan size is about 84 inch to 13 inch (21cmx3,5cm). It is battery powered and saves the images on a memory card, so you can scan without a computer. This is very interesting. Sometimes, a library has very old books. You can read them inside the library, but you can't borrow them. With a small handscanner like that, you can scan it in the library.

It sounds very cool - but I am not sure how good it is. I saw one at german Amazon, from Hyundai. There are 24 ratings. 16 give it 5 stars, and 4 give 4 stars.
However, personally I think an experienced MR member can tell me more about it - I hope one of you can ...
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Old 04-07-2012, 06:32 AM   #11
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Hi,

see this thread for a discussion about a similar scanner:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=118943
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Old 04-07-2012, 04:09 PM   #12
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@tuskin

thanks for the link. It was very interesting (but I still haven't decided if I should get one or not)
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Old 04-20-2012, 01:12 PM   #13
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At my work and at pharmacies we use a Fujifilm document scanner.
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Old 04-20-2012, 02:00 PM   #14
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It still suffers from the same old problems the handhelds suffered from 20 or so years ago. Sure the optical tracking got better (optical mouse ftw) but books and paper are elastic things so there are bound to be distortions. And those can be fixed with software only so well and it interferes with OCR.

You can take a digital camera to the library. If the library also provides a good reading light you might end up with a better result with less fiddling a mini scanner across a page and never knowing if it really got everything.
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Old 04-03-2013, 09:49 AM   #15
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They're using a computer synth voice for their demonstration/marketing youtube videos?

Seems legit...
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