camera copy stand

[Peter]

A previous respondent's comment in this tread has a good point - a flatbed scanner might be a better solution if the OP is copying 2 dimensional objects. With even inexpensive OEM scanning software, you can frame (crop) the scan to fill the image file with the area of interest and still have enough resolution in that file to tweak crop the full frame image produced by the scan a little bit if needed and still get very good quality 8x10 prints. I bought my Epson 3170 flatbed 5-6 years ago and found it to be an excellent value. I've probably used it to make more than 10,000 image files and it works as well as when I first got it.

[Jim Elbrecht]

Scanners work with 3d objects, too. Just drape them with black cloth.

But they are painfully slow- and if the point is just to preserve an image, I'd go with a camera.

-snip-

Aside from the pictures I've taken with it-- I'll bet I've copied

100,000 book pages [many of them were books in library archives where no flash or scanning was permitted].

Jim

[Peter]

Well of course if your scenario prohibits scanning, a copy stand may be the only reasonable alternative. However, in my experience, copying documents and photos, a flatbed scanner is faster than a manual copy stand, especially if the documents are not identical in size. Additionally, for multi-page documents, by scanning I can make multi-page pdf files without any additional time compared to making single page files and save all the post-processing time I would have to spend to merge multiple image files from the memory card of a camera.

I'm sure that there are pros and cons to each copy technique and scanning will be easier and faster for some copy jobs and a copy stand will be easier and faster for others. I haven't even raised the issue of color balance and lighting source when comparing the two copy methods.