Here is a photo from a month or so ago:
You see 20-24" of kitchen counter on a 2x4 frame with a vertical member rising from the rear exactly as Dan describes in his Instructible. Only point of interest is the now-obsolete bit of plywood clamped to the splash guard. The plywood is notched for the "thumb thing" bar.
Lighting consists of 2 halogen lamps from the partially-disassembled drywall lights.
You'll note I've used C-clamps in honor of Dan's design principle to affix lamps to the "gallows." And you'll note that the drywall lights' wire guards have been removed. The height of the lamps is such that there's little risk of my burning myself on the fixtures or glass. I've just got to make sure I don't lose those guards before I need the drywall lights for something else.
This shows my abortive attempt at building an integrated camera mount and the result of my saying, "screw it," and buying two tripods.
You'll note that I hope to put both cameras on arms extending outwards from a cross-piece clamped to the vertical member. Little problems like keeping everything square and isolating the cameras from vibration sufficed to motivate the purchase of two cheap tripods from the local Meijer's Thrifty Acres. Also visible here are the Mark 0 Cardboard "thumb things" that worked passably well.
This side view shows everything except for the cabling.
Note the bookcases in the dim background. They are filled with volumes crying out "digitize me."
The Mark 1 Plywood "thumb things" consisted of a bit of leftover black shelf material (Don't use bike inner-tube material.) stretched over triangular bits of plastic with straps bolted down. They worked surprisingly well, but the shiny bits needed to be covered with black duck tape, not shown. (Non-shiny gaffer's tape preferred.)
You can see the Mark 0 and Mark 1 thumb things here.
Thumb Things were superceded by sdati's air-platen, which I stole, and my implementation is shown here:
I made it too big, but the raw material, a stick from an old hammock, had regularly spaced holes that mostly worked to give me some adjustability.
Here's an action shot showing the air-platen.
Those nifty brass corner supports I added are beautiful, but they contribute undesirable reflections. Good thing I finally got some flat-black gaffer's tape.
My one innovation to the air-platen is a bit of teflon that eases contact between air-platen and book-gutter.
(You'd think I'd know to get the focus/macro right.) Another element that does not work are the rubberized magnets which are too week to hold anything. They'll be replaced with Velcro when I get back to work on this project.
The result of all this folderol looks something like this:
Sadly, the image manifests keystone distortion. Is this because I didn't set up the camera right, and it's looking at the page from an angle? I think so. Is it because the pages tend to "bow out" from the top and bottom margins, curving toward the camera? I think that, too.
Problems:
1) Setting manual focus or locking the focus on the Canon A590 requires puttering around. I'd like to set it once and leave it unchanged.
2) Same goes for zoom. But every time I turn off the cameras, they forget. Whenever I change memory chips, I have to reset zoom and hope it's consistent with last time.
3) When I trigger the cameras, sometimes one fires but the other does not. Or worse, one fires, and the other waits until I've got my hand in the frame changing the page, and then it fires.
4) What are the ideal camera settings for this fixture?
5) Can keystoning be removed via correct camera placement/aim/zoom?
6) Which improvements for the air-platen are indicated?
