Here's a few pages of my first scan using a "Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S700" with poor lighting. I got the gist now, so my next book scan should be a lot better. Currently I am scanning my entire collection of American Pit Bull Terrier books. I have over 15 (ABPT) books currently in my possession along with tons of outdated (ABPT) Magazine journals. This is just a warm-up. I have a HUGE project in about 4 months, I am a pedigree archivist hobbyist, I'm collecting pedigrees of all breeds of dogs and make those pedigrees available online for for breeders. AKC registry has the biggest library of pedigree stub books available for all breeds, I'll scanning the entire library of over 300 books averaging over 900 a pages per book.
I am curious to know what is the largest book scanning project here on DIY Book Scanner forum?
image 1
image 2
image 3
What you guys think and how can I improve?
Pedigree research project!
Moderator: peterZ
- daniel_reetz
- Posts: 2812
- Joined: 03 Jun 2009, 13:56
- E-book readers owned: Used to have a PRS-500
- Number of books owned: 600
- Country: United States
- Contact:
Re: Pedigree research project!
Looks to me like your biggest problem is lighting... get some bright, even light on those pages! That will really increase your image quality. The next thing is to hold the book and camera as fixed as you can. It will help us help you if you spend some time describing your scanning setup, so we can troubleshoot.
Congrats on getting started! It's no small step...
EDIT: did you see the "camera and a piece of glass" tutorial on the front page of diybookscanner.org? It might give you some ideas... check the PDF.
Congrats on getting started! It's no small step...
EDIT: did you see the "camera and a piece of glass" tutorial on the front page of diybookscanner.org? It might give you some ideas... check the PDF.
-
- Posts: 13
- Joined: 08 Nov 2010, 02:56
- Number of books owned: 0
- Country: USA
- Location: Online
- Contact:
Re: Pedigree research project!
Yes I have to agree it was poor lighting. Any other ideas to improve my quality?
Re: Pedigree research project!
If you want to look at a really cheap build, here's my current setup. I'm also having some lighting problems, but it doesn't really affect quality if it's uniform and you good contrast between the text and the page.
It's basically a DSLR screwed into a shelf (so that it stays still), two lamps (you don't want shadows on your pages), and a remote trigger mouse (not shown here, but it gets me to around 24 pages a minute). Also, I used Plexiglass to press down the book. Glass is much better, but if you use plastic glass, keep in mind that it scratches easily and gets cloudy from the constant rubbing. Here is a sample scan (I use a white background to aid in postprocessing, and a book to make the pages flat. Warping makes me sad): If you have the money, invest in a good camera (or two identically mediocre cameras). 7.2 MP isn't going to cut it for a single-camera build (well, it will be readable, but the quality will be pretty bad).
Good luck!
It's basically a DSLR screwed into a shelf (so that it stays still), two lamps (you don't want shadows on your pages), and a remote trigger mouse (not shown here, but it gets me to around 24 pages a minute). Also, I used Plexiglass to press down the book. Glass is much better, but if you use plastic glass, keep in mind that it scratches easily and gets cloudy from the constant rubbing. Here is a sample scan (I use a white background to aid in postprocessing, and a book to make the pages flat. Warping makes me sad): If you have the money, invest in a good camera (or two identically mediocre cameras). 7.2 MP isn't going to cut it for a single-camera build (well, it will be readable, but the quality will be pretty bad).
Good luck!
Re: Pedigree research project!
Anonymous, have you tried a black background? Some say it gives better results...
Also are you using a custom White Balance setting taken by using a full-frame picture of some blank paper under your PMMA sheet as the calibration image? If you're not, it might be a good idea to do so..?
Also are you using a custom White Balance setting taken by using a full-frame picture of some blank paper under your PMMA sheet as the calibration image? If you're not, it might be a good idea to do so..?
-
- Posts: 13
- Joined: 08 Nov 2010, 02:56
- Number of books owned: 0
- Country: USA
- Location: Online
- Contact:
Re: Pedigree research project!
Hi everyone, I am currently using a scanner wand and it seems to be working great. I still need a minmum of two book scanners. I spoke to library activist and he mention I'm allow to bring my book scanners into the library to scan the complete collects of stud books. http://www.digitalkoot.fi/en/splash and http://www.microtask.com/ I don't know how they are doing it nor the programming language needed to get started. Looking for any resources needed to start this type of project. All help is welcome.
The wand scanner images seem to be doing the wook good, but only if I want to drag this project on for 10 years. They over 500,000 pages needing to be scanned. I also attach some of the work below of the wand scan images. Not prefect but not bad also.
Will I pretty much got the project lick on collecting the data after I purchase two book scanner from Daniel; however, I still having a problem vetting all the data. I need to OCR all 500,000+ scan images, edit and add then to a spreadsheet to be uploaded to a database. I want to cut all these processes in half by crowd sourcing all this work. I want to using or create a similar system as