Recommended scanner for books?

  • Thread starter Thread starter sk8terg1rl
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sk8terg1rl

Hi everyone,

Can anyone recommend a good scanner for scanning books? By good I
mean:-
1. Auto-corrects the image for text near the book spine (so it still
remains sharp without appearing blurry/out of focus)
2. Scans quickly

An example of a good scanner is the one in my college's postgrad
student office: an Epson Perfection 2480 Photo. I even did a test
where I placed a hardcover book un-pressed down on the glass, so that
the text by the edge was flat on the glass but the text on the spine
was about 2.5cm off the glass. The text & diagrams still came out
crisp in PNG format (it wasn't fed through an OCR).

My budget is probably about £30-40 tops.

Thanks for any advice,
Kate xx
 
Have you considered a digital camera? Faster than a scanner with better
depth of field.
 
Have you considered a digital camera? Faster than a scanner with better
depth of field.
Click to expand...

Hi, thanks for your advice. I have used a digital camera for some
applications where I didn't have a scanner handy (like important
paperwork which I fill up there and then).

However my purpose of scanning these books are to maintain an
electronic record of my references under an academic copyright license
(IOW I can copy small %ages of copyrighted material for academic use).
Should I need to, I would want to be able to print them out and re-
read them as I won't have access to my university library once I
graduate.

For a sample scan by the Epson Perfection 2480 scanner, see:
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/5499/samplescanepsonperfectixd5.png

Thanks again,
Kate xx
 
I'm unclear why a camera won't work for this purpose, perhaps even
better than a scanner.
 
sk8terg1rl wrote:

Can anyone recommend a good scanner for scanning books? By good I
mean:-
1. Auto-corrects the image for text near the book spine (so it still
remains sharp without appearing blurry/out of focus)
Click to expand...

I thought that all thick bed scanners (cold cathode fluorescent & CCD
sensor) handled books well while thin bed scanners (CIS sensor -- has
an LED and photo sensor for each pixel in the row) required the page
to be almost perfectly flat. I scan a lot of books with my old Umax
and Mustek thick beds, and the print near the spine is at least
legible. My Mustek can do 11" x 17" but only 300 DPI, and I believe
they still make one this size for about $180 US, by far the cheapest
for any large bed scanner.
2. Scans quickly
Click to expand...

Epson?
 
I'm unclear why a camera won't work for this purpose, perhaps even
better than a scanner.
Click to expand...

One reason is the need for an expensive mount platform and
alignment. With a scanner you just throw the book on and
align the page corner.

IMO, key in using a scanner is having something heavy on the
book spline to put the center down at closer to same aspect
as the rest of the page, then to use an image editing
function to select the area that is further away (dithering
progressively into this area) to geometrically change the
horizontal perspective on this area. Whether some scanners
have an integrated book scanning mode that can do this
automatically, I don't know... but any scanner in native
non-correcting mode would instead show the text running into
the spline area as progressively smaller and slightly
fuzzier as the distance from scanner bed increase.

That is one advantage to a camera futher away, that the
relative distance of all text is more equal. However the
Epson Perfection 2480 example linked, looked pretty good.
It was available for about $110 or so, but seems
discontinued so the newer generation equivalent product from
Epson might be one option - and presumably has software
capable of the same tweaks to achieve an acceptible outcome.
Using a decent camera instead and platform for it (presuming
these parts have yet to be acquired) would cost quite a bit
more than a ~ $110 scanner.
 
sk8terg1rl wrote:



I thought that all thick bed scanners (cold cathode fluorescent & CCD
sensor) handled books well while thin bed scanners (CIS sensor -- has
an LED and photo sensor for each pixel in the row) required the page
to be almost perfectly flat.
Click to expand...

Agreed, thin LED types are horrible at 3D focus.


I scan a lot of books with my old Umax
and Mustek thick beds, and the print near the spine is at least
legible. My Mustek can do 11" x 17" but only 300 DPI, and I believe
they still make one this size for about $180 US, by far the cheapest
for any large bed scanner.


Epson?
Click to expand...

Whatever happened to cheap scanners anyway? There used to
be deals for Visioneer 1200 DPI for about $15 after a
rebate. Granted it wasn't top-notch by any stretch but
equivalent scanners today cost closer to $70.

I still have a couple of Visioneer/Primascan (same tech
different relabel) that were about $5/$10 after rebate and
just refuse to die. One has a CCF tube that has dimmed a
bit over the years but a simple contrast increase is not
much of a bother for text, since it's normally done anyway
to get rid of page grain.
 
kony said:
Agreed, thin LED types are horrible at 3D focus.




Whatever happened to cheap scanners anyway? There used to
be deals for Visioneer 1200 DPI for about $15 after a
rebate. Granted it wasn't top-notch by any stretch but
equivalent scanners today cost closer to $70.

I still have a couple of Visioneer/Primascan (same tech
different relabel) that were about $5/$10 after rebate and
just refuse to die. One has a CCF tube that has dimmed a
bit over the years but a simple contrast increase is not
much of a bother for text, since it's normally done anyway
to get rid of page grain.
Click to expand...
I find myself confused as what the original poster needs or wants.
I initially assumed it was many pages/chapters of books at one time but
it appears that the need is for a page here today, two tomorrow. And
optical character recognition is not sought (one good reason to buy a
scanner since so many include OCR-lite software).

A digital camera with built-in flash seems ideal for occasional
page copying (and can be used at birthday parties also.)
 
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