Hi Randal:

This might be a perfect use for a Nikon DSLR with Nikon's remote-control software. Canon and others 
may now have similar systems, but I am only familiar with the Nikon. Basically, the Nkon camera 
becauses a USB capture device and the software controls camera parameters and can pull the image 
directly to the hard drive, directly into Photoshop with recent versions.

That said, I've never tried it your way, I've always had very good results with a large-format 
scanner, late model Epson to be exact. My latest twist is to scan black and white back covers 
directly into Acrobat in OCR mode so that the text becomes searchable and exportable. It's not 
perfect but the results are legions better than they would have been a few years ago. I can't see 
how using a photo stand would get better or quicker results than a large-mode scanner. For the 
number of albums you're doing, surely there's budget for one of them. By the time you get set up to 
do the photo stand thing efficiently, you'll end up spending nearly as much for camera-control 
software, lighting, diffusion glass, etc.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Randal Baier" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2011 4:44 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] create quality album cover photos


I'd like to ask my esteemed colleagues how to get quality album images using
a decent digital camera and a good copy stand.

Our library archives is doing a digitization project involving the
photographing of about 1200 albums, mostly 33 1/3 LPs, but some 78s. We're
using a copy stand and plan to get a diffuser (or museum) glass so that the
albums can be flat. We do have a light meter and a good digital camera, so
really the preparation and proper workflow is what I'm interested in.

We're hoping that image capture rather than scanning will get us better results.

This is just a request for upfront advice so we can capture these images
properly.

I'm pretty impressed with the images on the Birka Jazz Archive site, for
instance. We need to capture images in high res formats for both web display
and projection.

Sincerely,
Randal Baier
Eastern Michigan University