I could have overlooked it somewhere in this 25 pages but just to make things clear:rob wrote:No, the optical zoom of the camera is enough to zoom in on smaller pages without losing any detail. If you have to use digital (i.e. fake) zoom to get a full image, your book is probably too small for the scanner.
As far as I can tell the distance between camera and platen is about 17 inches. True?
The reason I ask is that as far as I can see there some problems with some never models of compact cameras. For example the new Canon PowerShot A810 (specs: http://usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/prod ... ifications ). All is fine and dandy when you don't zoom since it only needs to be 1.2 or 2 inches from the object to be able to focus. But when you zoom the number changes to 3.9 feet. I can't tell from the specs if those 3.9 feet is true as soon as you zoom though.
If that is the case you would be stuck with field of view of something like 22 x 16 inches and that's a lot of wasted pixels.