>>4272744I just "quickly" downloaded a funny quote from archive. It took me forever trying to find one with uncorrected scan source. kek
By the looks of it they just used some glass to straighten the pages, then shoot it without it. Single camera, plenty of work, it was probably needed to break the spine on occasions, but the results are very good in my estimation.
I worked with both glass and without on my own scans. Always just with a single camera setup, so only a single sheet of glass was needed. Even or odd pages first, then combine it all together later.
Without it, it was needed to straighten pages, and work slowly. First and last pages were pretty hard, but it was fairly easy during the middle parts. Quality was slightly better, but It was slower and I ended with slightly curved pages, so I've ditched that method. Also, it's useless for paperbacks. With glass method, I'll put book on a 90° rack, put a glass on the scanned page, hold the other page with a plastic sheet, and go page by page.
Gear: Three led panels close to the book, at an angle so there's no shine on glass. Setting lights right is single most important step. I can't emphasize this enough. I use zoom lenses @f5.6 and around 45mm. I've sharp primes, and plenty of macro lenses. Problem with them is that distance from book to lens changes depending on book size and thickness. With zoom lens, I can have body always fixed in the same place and just zoom out or in a little to adjust for different sizes. With primes, I'd have to fiddle with camera constantly. Image quality is negligible anyway.
For processing I used to use bookscan wizard, now I just edit everything in Capture one, since I already use it for tethering. Straightening ever 20 pages or so, then auto apply same correction. One version is archival, as close as possible to original, the other high contrast. White pages, black text. Export all as jpegs, combine into pdf (avoid Acrobat), run ocr, downscale, done.
