How can I photograph book pages so they look more like a scanner output?
Asked 11/4/2011
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I’d like to use my Canon Rebel DSLR to photograph pages from a standard book, but my results look flat: the paper comes out gray instead of white, and the printed text looks gray instead of black. I’m trying to get a clear, crisp image with even lighting and strong contrast, similar to what a flatbed scanner produces. Is that achievable with a camera setup, and if so, what shooting and lighting techniques help? Why does a scanner make this seem so much easier?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
15y ago
2 Answers
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You can certainly get much better results than you're experiencing now, but it's going to take a bit of fiddling around to do it.
The "real world" has a lot bigger range of light-to-dark than typical ink on paper. The paper isn't nearly as white as you think it is, and the ink reflects a lot more light than you probably think it does. In pictures of the "real world", the brightest brights are both lighter in color and are in brighter light, while the darkest darks are both darker in color and in shadow. By comparison, there is only the difference in reflectivity between the white of the paper and the black of the ink in a "process" picture.
Real-world images tend to average to middle tones too. Your camera is designed to look at the scene before it, measure the light and adjust things so that the middle tones in the image are rendered with a middle-grey brightness. (The algorithm is actually a little more complicated, in that the camera can judge an overall light or dark bias and can, to a degree, recognize some types of scenes and adjust for the "usual" exposure for what it's recording.) So you are shooting what is, in effect, a low-contrast scene with more white than the camera is expecting (the ink coverage for text is usually only about 5%, and the camera is expecting the scene to have an average reflectance of about 18%).
To get the right exposure, you're going to have to use the exposure compensation to increase the exposure a bit, making the whites whiter. Increasing the light levels will help a lot as well since the reflectance of the paper is (usually) higher than that of the ink, so you'll get a better starting contrast. But you'll probably still need to increase the contrast over a "flat" capture.
Your camera may have a scene setting for that that's aggressive enough to do the job, but the chances are that you'll need to set the white and black levels for the picture in post-processing.
As for why it's easy on a scanner, well, the scanner knows how much light it's throwing at the page (it doesn't have to rely on measuring the reflected light) and it also "knows" that it's going to be dealing with a smaller range of tones (nothing can be brighter than the whitest paper, nothing can be darker than the blackest ink, and shadows are anomalies that only happen when you scan solid 3D objects), so it will bump up the contrast to suit.
Originally by user2719. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user2719
15y ago
0
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Yes—better results are possible with a camera, but you need controlled lighting and exposure. A scanner is easier because it uses very even, fixed illumination and captures the page at a constant distance and angle, so contrast is predictable.
With a camera, the main issues are metering and lighting. Your camera’s meter tends to average scenes toward midtones, so a mostly white page often gets rendered gray unless you compensate. Use bright, even light across the page, keep the camera square to the page, and fill the frame with the page as much as possible.
To improve results:
- Add even illumination from both sides to avoid shadows and hot spots.
- Use exposure compensation or manual exposure so the page records close to white without blowing out detail.
- Use low ISO and solid support/tripod for maximum sharpness.
- Focus carefully and keep the sensor plane parallel to the page.
- Adjust contrast afterward if needed so the paper is white and text is black.
So yes, a crisp “scanner-like” result is achievable, but it usually takes some setup and testing compared with the convenience of a scanner.
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