Hello all, I am want to buy a digital camera for the frirst time, but don't know much about them. Ideally I would like to be able to use it for photographing documents. I have always favoured point and shoot type cameras. Can anyone give me some advice about what to look out for? Many thanks, Celia Cole Surrey UK

In message of 29 Jun, Mlc1@aol.com wrote: > Hello all, > > I am want to buy a digital camera for the frirst time, but don't know > much about them. Ideally I would like to be able to use it for > photographing documents. I have always favoured point and shoot type > cameras. Can anyone give me some advice about what to look out for? Yes this will work. But you want lots of detail in the image for it to print out clearly. This requires something around 5 MegaPixels to give the required image size. The next thing is that you will want to take photographs from a foot or so away. Check that the camera will focus as close as this. An inbuilt flash might help, though most have such these days. You'll need some software to process the pics from the camera. Ask to try this out, some are rather unfriendly. You will also need to get the pics from he camera to your computer for storage and printing. Either this can be done with a card-reader, which is an extra, or it can be done with a direct link. Again ask to try both out to see which you find easiest. Finally it might be useful to have a tripod mounting as you may not be able to hold it steady enough to get clear pictures. Ask the shop to demonstrate their tripods in use. I once bought a handy little tripod that extends to about 8 inches high and is ideal for taking photos of documents that are stood up, but not documents that are flat on a table; a mere £10 IIRC. That's all I can think of off the top of my head. -- Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim@powys.org              For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org

Sorry people, My mail to Celia was not meant for the general list. Please ignore. -- Peter Amsden Argyll, Scotland

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 04:33:36 EDT, Celia Cole wrote: >I am want to buy a digital camera for the frirst time, but don't know much >about them. Ideally I would like to be able to use it for photographing >documents. I have always favoured point and shoot type cameras. Can anyone give me >some advice about what to look out for? I have successfully photographed documents in Record Offices for several years now, using a 5 megapixel small 'point and shoot' camera and the camera's inbuilt flash. In fact about a month ago we were down at Woking History Centre and took 380 pictures of documents there over a period of a couple of days - it took my wife about a month to process these on a computer, print them out, list them and fill a lever arch file. Here are some points to consider: 1. Camera resolution 5 megapixels is a realistic minimum resolution and will work with documents up to about A3 in size. If you photograph larger documents in one shot you will probably not be able to interpret the writing unless it is very large in the original. We took several overlapping shots of larger documents, but don't expect to be able to line them up perfectly (unless you use a tripod to keep the camera the same distance from the document as you traverse it - and then barrel distortion of the lens may cause problems that can be fixed later on your computer with the right software but is time consuming). You can use so-called 'panoramic' mode software to merge these pictures into a larger whole, which you can then read on the computer screen after zooming in. But without a suitable large format printer you may not be able to print such pictures out at a readable size. My next camera will have about 10 megapixel resolution so I can deal with larger documents - 'point and click' cameras with this resolution are just coming on to the market - Casio have just bought out a 10 megapixel Exilim camera - of course professional cameras costing over £1,000 are available with higher megapixel ratings. Photography professionals will tell you that megapixels are not the only factor in getting sharp clear pictures, the quality of the lens, the area of the sensor, and the accuracy of the focus and exposure are also important. While it is true that you can buy cheap but awful cameras with reasonable megapixel ratings, I think in practice for middle range cameras megapixels rule. 'Consumer' digital single lens reflex cameras with interchangeable lenses are available in the £350 to £700 range now and are more versatile and have better lenses with less distortion than the point and click variety. For example, you need a wide angle lens if you wish to photograph buildings (exteriors and interiors) where there is not sufficient room to step back to capture the whole scene. But if you only want to use the camera for general family and family history use in addition to document copying, I have found that a simple 'point and click' camera is fine. 2. Focus range As already mentioned you will want to focus on documents only a few inches across, so this needs to be checked for the cameras you consider. In practice I have found that most cameras costing £150 or more are OK for this - in fact most have a 'macro' setting that enable close focusing on small objects. 3. Illumination and camera shake If you are able to use flash (and only certain record offices allow this) then camera shake is not such a problem. You will still get a slightly blurry picture even with flash if you are not fairly steady holding the camera. If you cannot use flash then you really need a tripod (and some record offices do not allow this for 'health and safety' reasons). Most tripods are not designed for taking pictures below them on a flat horizontal surface - you need to find one that allows the camera to point downward. Some have an extension rod so that the camera can be placed to one side of the tripod centre so the tripod legs are not in the picture with large documents. There are also so-called 'copy stands' designed to hold a camera pointing downward. Most of these cannot deal with documents much over A3 in size. In fact some record offices have them for customer use. See for example the following National Archives document: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/photo_policy.pdf A few 'point and shoot' digital cameras (eg. Canon, Casio and Pentax) now come with anti-shake (image stabilisation) systems and I would certainly get one if I was buying now - they are not perfect but do help. Optical image-stabilisation is generally considered better than stabilisation produced by software. With no tripod or flash allowed the documents need to be well illuminated - place near a window if you can. You can now also get cameras with 'low light' sensitivity - this means that in low light the exposure time can still be quite short to eliminate the effect of camera shake. I would also want this in a new camera. Finally, there are tripod 'work arounds' such as a 'string tripod'. This basically involves fixing three cords near the corners of the camera which are tied to the table on which the document lies and stretched tight before taking the picture. 4. Reflections If the surface of the document is shiny, or the Record Office insist on placing a protective film over the document, the flash or even the room lights or window light will show up as a reflection on the document surface. One way that I have found effective in eliminating or reducing flash flare is to take the photograph at an angle to the document surface so that a rectangular document becomes trapezoidal in outline. This can then be corrected on the computer with software. At Woking History Centre there was one fragile document that they covered with film and we used an umbrella to shade from the overhead lights and took the picture at an angle to the document using flash. We still could not get rid of all the reflections this way because the surface was not completely flat and the light sources were coming from so many directions, but we removed most of the reflections later using the computer. 5. Computer processing One advantage of digital cameras is that the pictures can be transferred to a computer, processed and printed out at home. The fastest way of transferring the pictures to a computer is to use a memory card reader which if not already built in, plugs into a USB port. Using a lead between the camera and computer is much slower and runs down the camera battery. Adobe Photoshop Elements (now at version 4) is generally considered to be the best low cost (about £70) picture editing software - it is a much cheaper cut down version of their professional Photoshop CS range. But there are many other simpler and cheaper alternatives. We have also found that a digital camera with flash can be used to photograph microfilm reader screens sufficiently clearly to be able to transcribe printed text later - microfilmed manuscripts are a different matter and depend very much on the quality of the original filming. Cheers, John John Addis-Smith Thurleigh, Bedfordshire, England

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:07:29 +0100, John Addis-Smith <genl@addisgen.com> wrote: > We have also found that a digital camera with flash can be used to > photograph microfilm reader screens sufficiently clearly to be able to > transcribe printed text later - microfilmed manuscripts are a > different matter and depend very much on the quality of the original > filming. I think that needs clarification John, it could be read two ways. Either that the use of flash aids the photographing of the reader screen or that the screen can be photographed despite the camera insisting on using the flash For those who don't understand the difference, the screen is a light source. The aim is to photograph that transmitted image. The use of a flash will tend to flood out that image rather than supplement it. In normal use a flash gun is substituting for the sun or some other light source, like you, the camera can se btter in bright light than dim light. However, think about how hard it is to read a screen in bright sunlight, that's what you are making the camera do if the flash is on. So what this boils down to is, if you want to use the camera for photgraphing screens, or generally in ROs, do make sure you can turn off the auto-flash-in-poor-light feature. = Malcolm.