Lighting for book shooter MK-V

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kloosen
Posts: 9
Joined: 26 Feb 2022, 14:55
Number of books owned: 0
Country: a nice one

Lighting for book shooter MK-V

Post by kloosen »

Hello,

so I am using the book shooter MK-V with a close setup as the original, namely black interior and light source quite far (>1 meter) away.

Since all 4 people who build this design used white interior to have more even lightening I tried going this route originally but suffered from a lot of reflections I could not handle.
Additionally they all used LED strips inside the cabinet as well, which might be the motivation for the white interior design. (Inverse square law of illumination)

So my questions is, what combinations of light source and interior would be best from white to matt black paper interior to LED strips inside the cabinet (maybe even on the side and if shallow enough top) or have strong light sources far away pointing inside to get even lightening while using a ton of light on the way?

I have been using a Conovy S2+ flashlight in conjunction with an LED desk lamp which yielded partially uneven lightening that rarely disrupted image processing with ScanTailor, but it happend.
Sometimes I used two flashlights but I am not certain that it resulted in more even lightening.

I want to build an upgrade to my current (beta) book shooter and would love if the lightening could be consistent and inside the cabinet to have a closed system altogether.
Ant1
Posts: 6
Joined: 28 Jan 2019, 07:41
E-book readers owned: tablet + perfect viewer
Number of books owned: 10000
Country: France

Re: Lighting for book shooter MK-V

Post by Ant1 »

Hello

If you are going to put the lights inside the box, you need to avoid reflection of the light on the glass towards the camera.
Therefore light location is best near the glass and to the side. Only one side available for light, the other is where the binding of the book goes and no place to put a light. So, the lighting is very asymetrical. The only way to mitigate this is to paint the opposite side white to reflect all possible light towards the page. So you have a combination of direct plus indirect lighting. And then the rest of the inside needs to be white to avoid contrast transition which would show on the image.

Alternative solution is to put the light farther away (outside the box). In this case lighting, although asymetrical, will be more even. Indirect lighting is thus not required and the inside is best painted black.

Cheers
Ant1
kloosen
Posts: 9
Joined: 26 Feb 2022, 14:55
Number of books owned: 0
Country: a nice one

Re: Lighting for book shooter MK-V

Post by kloosen »

This is a very nice and logically coherent explanation for why and when to use black or white interior.
Thank you.
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