Tripod recommendation

[ibr4him]

Hi,

I have a regular tripod that doesn't work very well for taking 45 deg macro photographs, I'm looking to buy this 'flex arm' but not sure if it will help that much.

What do you use? Can you please recommended better tripod or other (cheap) accessory that allows taking book photographs with ease, and preferably 90 deg pictures too?

Thanks

[spamsickle]

I'm not sure why you're trying to take macro photographs. My own experience has been that macro gives me barrel distortion when photographing books. Though I imagine univurshul's "go to" software, Lightroom 3, has something that fixes it, my preference is to avoid it in the first place.

I'm just using regular tripods, and using zoom without macro on the cameras. My scanner is designed to sit on the floor, though, and I get the impression that most people would rather operate them on a table or bench. I'm very happy with the flexibility they give me, for 45% shooting in either "landscape" or (recently) "portrait" mode. The biggest problem I've had has been getting the feet placed, but that's been pretty easy to solve.

What kind of problems are you having with the tripods?

[ibr4him]

Macro gives crisp text, and I need that because almost all books I'm doing have colored text that I need to preserve. It wouldn't have mattered if I wanted black and white which I assume does ST does binarization for to improve readability.

btw, I just bought Benro A-197 M8. You can get almost *any* angle you want, re-he-eally awesome!

[daniel_reetz]

Would love to see a review of that tripod for book scanning after you've spent some time with it...

[Misty]

I'd be interested as well.

[ibr4him]

There's a video preview of it available here.

I bought it for approx USD 190.

[ibr4him]

BTW, I use PTLens for barrel distortion correction.

[Misty]

I hadn't heard of PTLens before. It looks useful; I'm going to have to look into it. Thanks!

[univurshul]

I'm not sure why you're trying to take macro photographs. My own experience has been that macro gives me barrel distortion when photographing books. Though I imagine univurshul's "go to" software, Lightroom 3, has something that fixes it, my preference is to avoid it in the first place.

Yep, the compact cameras generally minimize lens distortion. Don't quote me on this, but unless you're working with a flat-field lens, nearly every lens has a natural distortion. iPhone 4 has distortion, even the A590IS Canon has lens distortion; after testing its images through Lightroom 3, I've noticed that the x and y axises on the image within ScanTailor processing clean up even more precise upon deskew, even with a compact camera. Treatment of photographs in LR3 with a simple lens correction preset is the best way to deal with issues like this in book scanning--because LR3 batch processes multiple settings & edits across all book pages (as opposed to one by one). Backing off the zoom as an attempt to flatten the image introduces more problems than what it's worth.

ibr4him, If you're after quality, at the moment, LR3 is a tool to be considered as a precurser to ST.

The thinking assumes if you own a $500+ camera, you might as well have a $75 image editor app to boot.

[Misty]

The thinking assumes if you own a $500+ camera, you might as well have a $75 image editor app to boot.

$75 only if you're a student. Standard retail for LR3 is $300.

It's definitely worth it from a pure quality standpoint, though. Lightroom's lens correction feature is amazing. I'd be interested in seeing how it compares to PTLens.