Budget camera?

Everything camera related. Includes triggers, batteries, power supplies, flatbeds and sheet-feeding scanners, too.

Moderator: peterZ

Post Reply
akalakaboom
Posts: 2
Joined: 21 Dec 2017, 03:19
E-book readers owned: Kindle
Number of books owned: 30
Country: Greece

Budget camera?

Post by akalakaboom »

Hi! I am a new member of this forum and I tried some attempts to make e-books with a scanner but it's very exhausting and I spend very much time on it.Can someone tell me something that is value for money, with low price and the closest thing to 'crystal' image (clear and decent quality).I don't care if it's a web camera or something else, I just need a camera that I can work with and that I can buy at the lowest cost.Any suggestions will be appreciated.
BillGill
Posts: 139
Joined: 18 Dec 2016, 17:13
E-book readers owned: Calibre, FBReader
Number of books owned: 7000
Country: USA

Re: Budget camera?

Post by BillGill »

I am using a Canon Powershot Elph 160. It is not necessarily the lowest cost. It has been discontinued, so you can't do much shopping around to get a better price. The last price I saw for it was $120 at Amazon. One advantage to using it is that you can use CHDK http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK with it. That allows extra functions and computer control. I have scanned quite a few books with mine and had pretty good results.

For the lowest price you might be able to use your phone camera. There are a number of people who are getting quite satisfactory results with them. I think there are also some apps you can use for scanning.

I"m not sure where you are running into problems, other than you need a good camera, but for me the most time consuming element is the editing after I have OCRed the scans. No matter how good a camera you have there will be errors in the OCR results and it will take time to find most of them. I doubt if you will ever find all of them. Of course the quality of the scans will depend on the quality of the source. I just finished scanning a book with my new scanner set up (viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3467) and started the second. The first one was a pretty good quality book. The second one is not as good. The pages are rather thin and the text on the back side of the page is showing through just a little bit. The second has a lot more errors.

Also I don't know what you are using for an OCR program. I am using AABBYY Finereader 14. However you might find it out of your budget. I have tried one free OCR program, and it works, but not work extremely well. So possibly your problem might be there. There are some free online OCR products. I haven't tried any of them, but they might be better.

Bill
Konos93a
Posts: 195
Joined: 19 Sep 2016, 10:00
E-book readers owned: kobo aura,kindle 1,kindle pw3,pocketbook inkpad 2
Number of books owned: 3000
Country: greece

Re: Budget camera?

Post by Konos93a »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euJSyIALWYE how about this one .try on your mobile phone
akalakaboom
Posts: 2
Joined: 21 Dec 2017, 03:19
E-book readers owned: Kindle
Number of books owned: 30
Country: Greece

Re: Budget camera?

Post by akalakaboom »

BillGill wrote: 23 Dec 2017, 14:18 I am using a Canon Powershot Elph 160. It is not necessarily the lowest cost. It has been discontinued, so you can't do much shopping around to get a better price. The last price I saw for it was $120 at Amazon. One advantage to using it is that you can use CHDK http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK with it. That allows extra functions and computer control. I have scanned quite a few books with mine and had pretty good results.

For the lowest price you might be able to use your phone camera. There are a number of people who are getting quite satisfactory results with them. I think there are also some apps you can use for scanning.

I"m not sure where you are running into problems, other than you need a good camera, but for me the most time consuming element is the editing after I have OCRed the scans. No matter how good a camera you have there will be errors in the OCR results and it will take time to find most of them. I doubt if you will ever find all of them. Of course the quality of the scans will depend on the quality of the source. I just finished scanning a book with my new scanner set up (viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3467) and started the second. The first one was a pretty good quality book. The second one is not as good. The pages are rather thin and the text on the back side of the page is showing through just a little bit. The second has a lot more errors.

Also I don't know what you are using for an OCR program. I am using AABBYY Finereader 14. However you might find it out of your budget. I have tried one free OCR program, and it works, but not work extremely well. So possibly your problem might be there. There are some free online OCR products. I haven't tried any of them, but they might be better.

Bill
The Canon camera that you got seems very nice for me.Also I never thought that a phone camera can do this kind of things.Thanks for your response too Konos93a for your help,I am very happy to see another Greek person in this forum (euxaristo file). I think I will settle on phone camera, with Honour 9.
Konos93a
Posts: 195
Joined: 19 Sep 2016, 10:00
E-book readers owned: kobo aura,kindle 1,kindle pw3,pocketbook inkpad 2
Number of books owned: 3000
Country: greece

Re: Budget camera?

Post by Konos93a »

well if you are in athens greece we can build a scanner together ,or i can send u one phone-scanner with a cost of materials and the transport changes
.

in any case please ask me anything because i am trying to make a beginner guide in greece through videos that will get translated in english and other languages.

na sai kala , kali sou xronia file mou :D
Post Reply