Pi Scan 1.5: DSLR and Mirrorless Camera Support

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duerig
Posts: 388
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Pi Scan 1.5: DSLR and Mirrorless Camera Support

Post by duerig »

I've just released Pi Scan 1.5 on github:

https://github.com/Tenrec-Builders/pi-scan

The big new feature is that it supports the gphoto2 library now, and so any camera that is compatible with gphoto2 can now be used with Pi Scan. See the supported cameras here:

http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php

Information on using DSLRs or Mirrorless cameras in Pi Scan here:

https://github.com/Tenrec-Builders/pi-s ... rlessdslrs

In particular, I am recommending the use of Nikon 1 J5 cameras right now. These are the cameras I've been using to test with and the good quality I've seen combined with the longevity they have compared to a standard DSLR makes them a great candidate.

The only down side of this support is that I couldn't consistently set all the settings I wanted on the camera using gphoto2. This means that when using a gphoto2 camera, Pi Scan itself only captures the images and saves them off to external storage. All settings including zoom and focus are up to the user to manually set before connecting the camera to Pi Scan. For most things this isn't a big deal because they can be set once and then they persist. But on a Nikon 1 J5, the zoom setting is lost on power off and so you will need to redo the zoom with every session.

Nikon 1 J5 cameras are quite a bit more expensive than most of the cameras we've been using here. We're running a pre-order of Archivist Quill complete kits which include these cameras to see if there is interest. You can also see a side by side comparison of ELPH 160 to Nikon 1 J5 shots there:

https://store.diybookscanner.org/collec ... -pre-order

If you have a DSLR or mirrorless camera and try it out, let me know how it goes. You can either respond to the thread here or contact me via help@tenrec.builders
L.Willms
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Re: Pi Scan 1.5: DSLR and Mirrorless Camera Support

Post by L.Willms »

from your Github-doc on GPhoto2 use:
An additional advantage of using gphoto-compatible cameras is that if you specify a raw image output, Pi Scan will automatically fetch and collate the raw images alongside the JPEG files.
I like that. JPEG files with their lossy compression are not so good for the fine details needed for OCR. With my flatbeds I only scan to TIFF.

Is there a way to convert RAW images batchwise to TIFF?
duerig
Posts: 388
Joined: 01 Jun 2014, 17:04
Number of books owned: 1000
Country: United States of America

Re: Pi Scan 1.5: DSLR and Mirrorless Camera Support

Post by duerig »

I was doing some research and it seems like JPEG actually preserves fine details pretty well. JPEG compression artifacts are much more likely to happen on large areas that are mostly the same color.

Having said that, lossless is clearly better for archival purposes either way. Preserving detail 'pretty well' is not the same as avoiding loss altogether. For batch conversions, I'd look to ImageMagick first. They seem to support a fairly wide array of 'raw' formats (unfortunately there doesn't seem to be just one standard of 'raw'): https://imagemagick.org/script/formats.php

-Jonathon Duerig
L.Willms
Posts: 134
Joined: 21 Sep 2016, 10:51
E-book readers owned: Tolino Shine
Country: Germany
Location: Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Re: Pi Scan 1.5: DSLR and Mirrorless Camera Support

Post by L.Willms »

Thanks for the tip imagemagic!

Something different: I see you recommend the Nikon 1 J5...

Me being a Canonical, I wonder what you think of using the Canon M mirrorless series?

The first model in that series (M without a number) has 18 Megapixels.
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