Raspberry Pi Camera soon released - 5 megapixels, $25

[dtic]

A Raspberry Pi camera module will soon be released!
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3224
The Raspi forum has a camera module section with a lot of details.
The camera captures 5 megapixel images. It also does 1080p video at 30 fps. The site says the camera will cost $25, which is also what the cheapest raspi costs.

1.jpg (49.88 KiB) Viewed 9829 times

[dtic]

It is scheduled for release in April
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3525
I'm interested in what the more camera knowledgeable people here think of this. It is only 5 megapixel. But on the other hand it can take multiple photos per second. Is it possible to somehow combine multiple photos of one and the same whole book page, but with different camera settings, in a way that produces an image that will produce better results in the software steps of book scanning?

[spamsickle]

Five megapixels would be adequate for most books -- that's what I've been using for a couple of years now. I'm a little worried about the fact that the lens is fixed focus. It may be that it's more suited to snapshots than scanning, if its fixed focus doesn't provide a sharp image of a page which is close enough to fill most of the frame.

[dtic]

I was curious if the Pi Camera's feature of 15 fps for full resolution photos would make a positive difference compared to regular 5 megapixels point and shoot cams. Could multiple photos of the same page but with different settings (brightness, color and so on) be combined into something that will produce better results in book scanning post processing software like Scan Tailor? I am having HDR in mind but have no idea if something similar could enhance photos of text.

[andyh2000]

Astronomers certainly stack multiple frames (from stills and video) to get a higher signal to noise ratio in the final image. Maybe it would work with books as well. See http://www.astronomie.be/registax/ for an example of the kind of software used.

Andrew

[dtic]

The raspi camera is very close to launch now. Here is a glimpse of it in a video.

[dtic]

(crossposted to raspi forum)
I now have a raspi and the camera module. I have tried various settings but so far has found no mode that gives photos feasible for book scanning. I even removed the glue (like MEEP did) and fiddled with manual focus changes. Here is a cropped output sample, taken from ~40 cm distance.

raspi.png (15.74 KiB) Viewed 9154 times

So, things are not looking very promising. There is talk at raspi forum about extra lenses. Maybe that can change things. Or maybe I haven't tweaked with the settings and manual focus enough yet. The raspi is a great little computer by the way and the camera is very useful for other, non book scanning stuff.