Book/Document Scanner setup

DSCN0981
Originally uploaded by sumantamandal

The challenges of using a traditional flat bed scanner are:

• Flatbed Scanners are slow due to the moving mechanical scan head. A typical sub $200 scanner can scan a document in 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
• Very hard to scan a thick book. The scanner cover does not cover the book fully and the scan does not turn out too well.
• The bindings of a book does not like the scanning process

I did some search on google.com for an alternate solution and came across the wonderful site http://diybookscanner.org/ maintained by Daniel Reetz.

There were some wooden boards lying around my workshop and I put something real quick. I was not satisfied by the image quality of Nikon L14 (7.1 megapixels) camera so I went to Compusa store to pick up a 12.2 megapixels digital camera.

Picked up $2.5 glass plate from local hardware store (Lowes). The glass plate keeps the page flatter. The glass plate also creates reflection of the opposite page. The black card board is used to prevent the reflection from the facing page.

Finally, I'm happy with the results...