russca wrote:That might be the way to go for me. I can get 2 Canon G12's for the price of one Canon DSLR.
Not sure the G12 is the best camera for the job. At 10mp it's not giving you as much resolution as some other cameras would. The tendency in high-end compacts right now is to tone the resolution down to improve image quality, which is great for photography but not so much for book scanning.
Anyway, the G12 is $470, which is a bit expensive when you can get a large-format sensor 12mp E-P1 with zoom lens for
$370.
Other compact cameras would be a cheaper option, too. For pure Scan Tailor text only, your standards for image quality don't need to be nearly as high as they would be for imaging illustrations. The venerable 10mp A480 would probably give you comparable text results to the G12 for a lot cheaper. I'm not very familiar with current compact cameras since I focus on archival reproductions, but I'm sure there's also something of higher resolution that would compete with the other options.
The 550D's main advantage for text is its 18mp resolution, which may or may not be necessary depending on page size. You can get 400+DPI from A4 if you're in the ~15mp range.
Edit: I might as well calculate approximate requirements. A4 is about 11.7" long. To get 400DPI from A4, you need a camera whose horizontal resolution exceeds 4680 pixels, which seems to be around 16mp. (11.7 inches x 400 dots per inch = 4680 pixels.) 300DPI would require only 3510 pixels (=11.7x300), which is feasible from 10 megapixels up.
The opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not necessarily represent those of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
