Custom-built book-photographing frame (Score 1)

It happens I've been building a contraption for a similar purpose over the past few weeks, in my spare time. (My own project is scanning paper books so I can DjVu them to read on my V3 book reader.

The structure I came up with is a hinged wooden frame with a wooden surface on one side, and a glass surface on the other. It hinges open at the top to sit at exactly 90 degrees, and the open book sits astride that. This allows the camera to photograph almost all the way to the spine.

By chance I took some photos of the frame itself last night (the wooden side and the glass side). I didn't photograph the cradle, as it wouldn't have the camera in it... The mirror is so I can see the digital camera screen as I'm positioning the book.

The camera (actually my cameraphone) sits inside the structure in an adjustable cradle - you can see part of the sliding mechanism on the wooden face. And a long handle (very crude) allows me to press the shutter release button.

Anyway, this is a very cheap and cheerful solution. I manage about 5-6 pages a minute (turning the pages is slow). The only problem so far is getting even lighting on the page surface. When I'm happy with the results, I'll probably put up a tutorial about how it's built and the software I use.