DIY Book Scanner

Why not use a mirror and a sheet of glass?
These can be bought from any hardware store.
If you look at my Footsie scanner thread, I assemble two sheets of glass between end cheeks. This produces a very rigid structure. It would be much lighter and cheaper than a prism.
Malcolm

Camera aiming using a Mirror Thanks for the advice dpc (third post in http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?16259-How-to-align-camera-and-flat-object ) explaining how to use a mirror for alignment. I put together a quick test. Here are the results... Mirror1.JPG Mirror2.JPG Th...

Thanks for the advice. Which part of the adjustments do you find the most time consuming? I expect to disassemble my scanner fairly frequently, because of space constraints, and for demonstrations off site. I would like to design it so that the most awkward adjustments can be done quickly.
Malcolm

Camera Aiming I've decided that my scanner must be able to fill the camera image from books of all sizes upto A4. This means that the camera must be adjustable in six degrees of freedom - up/down, left/right, in/out, roll, pitch, yaw (thinking rotation in aircraft terms). My current design has two ...

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. Here are the results of photographing a white test sheet. Footsie24jun1.JPG It was taken using a Canon Powershot A810, file size 2.9MB, 4608x3456 p...

Questions/comments from duerig and cday "...single circle in the middle which I presume was the sun as a single source of light..." I took the photo with 100 percent cloud, so I think the illumination was effectively from a translucent layer with the sun behind it. "...threshold on t...

Measuring Platen Lighting I've started work on improving the lighting in my scanner. First of all I tried to find out from postings on the site, how even it needed to be in practice - no luck. Then I looked to see how people measure how even the lighting is in their scanner build - again I couldn't...

How about 63 lights? If you look on the Footsie Bookscanner thread you will see that I am experimenting with LED strip lights, arranged in three lines. It works for me. I will try to do comparisons with GU10 spots, that could be easily fitted to my structure.
Malcolm

These ideas would avoid the complications of foot pedals, but might make the structure larger at the rear. However, I hope someone can explore these possibilities. At the moment I am concentrating on lighting, cameras and post processing. Here is an unretouched shot with cool leds replaced by warm w...

Answering jck57 - I did initialy think of a fabric sling, but couldn't make it press the book or leaflet evenly up against the platen. Your idea of using two arms and a counterweight is well worth trying.

Malcolm