Photographing books

[davidedric]

I have a book, published in the late 1930's or early 1940's called "Beautiful India and three of her neighbours". It's not specially rare or valuable, but it has 500 pages of photographs of India, with captions in English and, I think, Urdu and Hindi. 70 years on from partition and independence, I thought I would like to record some of the pages.

It's hardback, of course. Please can you suggest how best to photograph the pages.

Dave

[Mike Buckley]

This could be a tough project if the book doesn't lie flat, and it probably won't unless you break the binding, which of course you would not want to do. Even so, you might be able to get the left-hand page, as an example, to lie flat even though the right-hand page won't. Get the page you want to photograph as flat as possible, whether laying down or standing upright. Light the page evenly and without producing glare. That's easiest to do by placing equal light sources on both sides at about a 45-degree angle to the subject. If that's not practical, try lighting the page as evenly as possible using only one light source but it's important not to produce any glare, which is done by keeping the light source(s) outside of the family of angles.

For more details and options, see Light: Science and Magic.

[george013]

I have a book, published in the late 1930's or early 1940's called "Beautiful India and three of her neighbours". It's not specially rare or valuable, but it has 500 pages of photographs of India, with captions in English and, I think, Urdu and Hindi. 70 years on from partition and independence, I thought I would like to record some of the pages.

It's hardback, of course. Please can you suggest how best to photograph the pages.

Dave

The problem will be flat pages and keeping the book ok. I remember some standard made for copying books. Here's a link with the rough idea. https://photo.stackexchange.com/ques...graphing-books
The book is not opened completely, it must be easy to think of some tools to keep the page you're shooting flat. Just the idea.

If you've a Nikon you might look at ControlMyNikon for thetering shooting from the laptop.
Further mostly macro lenses are used for this kind of job.

George

[george013]

Google on "book scanner" and select the video's.

Let me know if and how you started. I'm curious.

George

[loosecanon]

1 To reduce see through from printing on the reverse slip a sheet of black paper under the page.

2 you may need to support the book at an angle to get pages as flat as possible.

3 If the book will open flat support the thinner side to get it level. Old magazines are useful here.

4 Check evness of lighting. A single light with a reflector card often works well.

5. beware of shadows from equipment, and your body, especially if room lights are on.

6 take a shot with a colour standard in the image so you can ensure correct colour temperature

[rpcrowe]

Once you have set up to photograph one side of the book (either left or right hand pages), I suggest that you photograph all the pages on that side rather than shifting between left and right hand pages. That would save you from having to reorient the setup with each page photographed.

[FinlayCole]

The problem will be flat pages and keeping the book ok. I remember some standard made for copying books. Here's a link with the rough idea. https://photo.stackexchange.com/ques...graphing-books
The book is not opened completely, it must be easy to think of some tools to keep the page you're shooting flat. Just the idea.

If you've a Nikon you might look at ControlMyNikon for thetering shooting from the laptop.
Further mostly macro lenses are used for this kind of job.

George

Thanks for that. It was insightful.

[xpatUSA]

Thanks for that. It was insightful.

George hasn't been around for a while and might not read your well-meant thanks. His posts in this thread are just over three years old.

Just sayin' ...

[Helly123]

I hope you're going to return to your project. I recently took part in another modern release of a book Of Mice and Men as my student project, and I worked on illustrations for it. I wrote annotation about the book's illustrations and art side using the site https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-e...-mice-and-men/ because I was not sure that I could do it. After all, I am not a writer but an illustrator and photographer. But the release part was quite stressful. So any art project is a lot of work and it's amazing to see the result.

[DanK]

New members: if you look at the top left of the last post in a thread, in the blue header above the post, you'll see the date of the most recent post. This particular thread is three years old, as Ted pointed out, and two of the three people in the discussion, George and Mike Buckley, haven't been on the site for a long time.

[davidedric]

Well, that's true, I'd forgotten the post, and I never did do the project (in fact, note to self, I lent the book to an Indian friend, must retrieve it).

My father brought the book back from India at the close of world war 2. He died many years ago, so the book really belonged to my mother, though on permanent loan to me.

But what makes it specially poignant is that my mother herself passed away, at the age of 99, just two weeks ago, so I guess it now legitimately belongs to me.

It's a rare case of a resurrected thread reappearing at just the right time, so thanks.

Dave