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At 08:57 AM 8/9/2003 +0200, Francesco Martinelli wrote: >As far as I can see, these are A3 scanners, and will leave out a strip 1 >cm wide from any cover. You can adjust/compensate or just live with it, >but I would not recommend them for archival work, as often some >interesting info will fall exactly into that strip (series number, etc). >35x35 cm scanners do exist for specialized markets but they are awfully >big and expensive (I found them used to scan tile designs). At this point >the digicam options (with the caveat about light and distortion) seems the >most viable for me. >Francesco It seems that we're coming back to the suggestion I offered. In that case, let me offer some detail. The copy stands I'm familiar with tend to overkill for your needs; a home-made rig is in fact quite simple since you do not need variation in the layout. Were I doing it, I'd plan on four small strobes for consistency of illumination and color temperature; the camera needs an external flash sync or hot shoe. You do not need zoom on the camera and if your requirement for resolution is reasonable, there are some excellent lenses on inexpensive cameras with ~2 megapixels. Assuming a moderately priced printer if you are going to paper or a usual computer monitor, that will be ample. (Figure on 150 dpi for color printing and do the arithmetic yourself. Of course, the pixel count for the monitor is easily estimated from the display dimensions.) If you go the low-cost route, you may want to put a supplemental lens on the camera (usually, it's in the mount on the copy stand) so you can use the optimal focus of the lens. I don't know what the market offers today; zoom lenses are the norm for moderate-cost digicams and finding a non-zoom with moderate resolution, a good lens and external sync may be impossible. Mike [log in to unmask] http://www.mrichter.com/