Photographing Books

[biblioadonis]

I have a large Walt Disney World/Disneyland book collection.

I don't want to scan them and risk breaking the bindings, so it leads me to think that photographing the pages that I want to share would be the next best thing. I am a librarian, so I understand that this is against the law, but my main purpose is to use the photos for book reviews. ;D

Any suggestions for a person with *just* a SONY point and shoot digital camera? I would mainly be taking shots of the prints from the books (paintings, drawings, etc).

I don't have a tripod (but I would buy a small one just for this project if needed). Should I use the MACRO feature or one of the other pre-programmed features (it is a Cybershot DSC-W80)?

Thanks!

 

[Dan]

I already tried replying to this once, but deleted my response because it was too much vagueness and conjecture. I've never done this, so I can only offer general advice. So here's my basic thoughts.


Don't use your on board flash. It could likely cause reflections. Work on setting up good lighting that hits the page at an angle so that you don't get reflections from that either. Also ensure that the lighting doesn't cause either your camera or you to cast a shadow.

Macro mode is probably not ideal because putting your camera that close to the page would cast a shadow, you'd need special lighting to work around that.

With sufficient lighting I'd imagine a tripod wouldn't be necessary, although you'd have to be careful to position the camera just right to get a perfectly straight shot at the page. A tripod probably wouldn't help in the positioning, you'd need a specialized document photography rig to hold the camera directly over a book. Or else you'd need to stand the book up on edge and aim it towards the tripod, and.. it just gets messy.

And beyond that I just get into suggestions to experiment. Like be careful with the type of lighting you use, different light sources have different color temperatures, and can make the page look different. Direct sunlight would seem to be ideal because it's a good, standard color temperature that most cameras can deal with, but it might tend to cause harsh glare. But I don't know your camera, it might figure out the white balance well enough that you don't have to bother. If you have a decent amount of white paper in the image you could use that to try to adjust the white balance in your editing software, but that assumes that the paper is good and white to begin with. Paper whiteness varies.

 

[biblioadonis]

Thanks, Dan. I really appreciate the advice. The Sony has an ISO setting of 3200. IT does have a fairly decent macro setting, which we usually use for flowers and butterflies. But I will experiment with the different angles and different lights.

Most of our indoor lights are compact fluorescents (trying to save energy). I will try some outdoor shots.

I use Picassa for what little editing I do (red eye). Is there a software that most pro and amateur photographers use? Photoshop?

 

[Dan]

Photoshop, or Photoshop Elements are both popular, Elements is the cheaper of the two by far.

If you want something totally free there's GIMP, an open source program. I've never used it, so I can't comment on it. It may have a reasonable amount of capability, but I suspect it won't be as easy to use, open source stuff like that can be a little cryptic.

There's also Paintshop Pro as a more reasonably priced but capable program, but I haven't used it much, I can't comment on it. It's different enough from Photoshop (which I am used to) that the differences get on my nerves, but that's just a matter of what I'm accustomed to. It's got some fairly sophisticated auto fix functionality, but I'm trying not to rely on that sort of thing.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

Thanks, Dan. I really appreciate the advice. The Sony has an ISO setting of 3200. IT does have a fairly decent macro setting, which we usually use for flowers and butterflies. But I will experiment with the different angles and different lights.

Don't bother using Sony's ISO 3200 for books. Heck, don't even bother using Canon dSLR ISO 3200 for fine-detailed works. The poor-man's way is by doing it outdoors during cloudy days. Use tripod.