DIY Book Scanner

Ok, I'll start by saying that I'm not done yet. I've enjoyed reading many, many build threads here and one thing I enjoy most is an unfolding story. Here's my go at being a good story teller... My history of book scanning, in summary, is hand-held camera/cell phone -> cardboard box cradle -> then wi...

Did you have the light in 45 degree and try different typs of light? No, I wish we had some light sources available at the time and place, but the best we could do was keep it uniform between shots. It was daylight coming in from a north-facing window and the target was about perpendicular to it. I...

I recently got the ELPH 160 when it was on sale for $99 and have been testing / playing with it for about a week. Because of that single instance of a reported brick, they have removed public links to the CHDK build. If you join up and ask for it they seem very willing to send links to people that a...

Footsie Platen Lighting I need to decide if more work is needed on my lighting system, since there are other aspects of the design that need attention. ... Malcolm Looks like the "-auto-level" doesn't like it when the scan area isn't all white / needs cropping. The minimum level is alread...

So here goes my attempt at quantifying and correcting lighting... Still using the Daylight1A.JPG source file for testing, let's assume it's a plain white paper test image taken by whatever camera and lighting you have available. (I think it was, outdoors?) This command will convert that file into a ...

Ok, I just checked up on imageMagick and I feel pretty dumb. A lot has changed since I last used it... (using wmalcomk's daylight test image) Daylight1A.JPG All you need for re-scaled visual feed back is this: convert Daylight1A.JPG -colorspace Gray -auto-level out-autolevel-1shot.jpg out-autolevel-...

Yes! I very much enjoyed reading this thread. (Sorry that I just found it and it is already several months old...) Some memories from my past: 1. yes, in general the more narrow the histogram the better 2. re-scaling the width from [whatever range you get] to 0-255 is the best way to emphasize the (...

Two things I can say about that. First that 3-4k usually includes one or more software packages (an ILL or kiosk system) and a minimum of 1 year of service. Institutions generally won't buy something without getting install/repair service and support pre-budgeted. As I understood it getting budget m...

Hi all, First of all I wanted to thank so many of you for sharing so much information, experience, pictures, tips on fixing or avoiding troubles... It really makes this hobby a possibility for me. It would be a very daunting challenge to start from nothing and figure out how to turn a real book into...

I am also a n00b in many ways, but having worked in the past for one of the major scanner companies I thought I might have something worth contributing. Please understand that I'm on this board for my hobby so please don't try and figure out which scanner company and "out" me for my past e...