I can't see how a camera would be faster, but whatever. By the time you get a cover placed, the 
camera set up, the shot taken and the image-editing done, I can't imagine it saves much time, for an 
admittedly inferior image quality. The exception would be 3-dimensional objects like some opera 
boxes or big 78 albums. Especially in the case of 78 albums, very hard to get them to sit on a 
scanner without doing damage. Same goes for some but not many gatefolds. One place you might do much 
better with a camera is shooting for deadwax scribe marks on an actual record, sometimes that scans 
OK but often not. Better scans for stamped marks, it all depends with hand-scribe marks, if they're 
deep and wide they scan fine, if they're light and thin they don't, in my experience.

The Epson unit I have does fine with any cover I've thrown at it so far. Sometimes the widest side 
needs to be sure to be running left-to-right on the glass, but usually the whole thing fits. I'm not 
worried about absolute edge-to-edge anyway, most of the time the edges are scuffed or cracked and 
get cropped anyway. Very few albums in my collection have vital info going all the way to the edges, 
although some definitely do as this is a distinct graphic style that was used over the years.

I tried the camera mounted on a copy stand method, figured out things like how to light it and how 
to set up tape marks so you could be reasonably sure the alignment would be right from one cover to 
the next and front to back, but the results were inferior to the scanner and I found it quicker to 
just keep raising and lowering the scanner lid. An old, old scanner would be so slow doing the scan 
that it would consume too much time, but modern units are speedy. What's really speedy is a 
large-scale pro-grade color copier/printer/scanner if you are lucky enough to have access. We have a 
Ricoh unit at work that's super-fast but alas its maximum height is 11.5 inches or so, width goes 
out to about 18 inches but that height gets you in too many cases.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2011 4:18 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] create quality album cover photos


> On 09/02/2011, Tom Fine wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
> A camera will be much faster than a scanner, but lower in resolution.
>
> Are big enough scanners currently available? A 12" sleeve is wider than
> A3.
>
>
>
>> -- 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
> Regards
> -- 
> Don Cox
> [log in to unmask]
>