Re-opening this thread after watching most of the Paperless Field Guide.
My use case has not changed, lots of old, fragile historical texts and documents that I’d like to scan into searchable PDFs. Most are books that cannot be fully opened. Some are old scrapbooks that are 12 x 17 inches and a lot of the standard 12 x 12 inch scrapbooks.
I tried setting up an old enlarger frame, replacing the enlarger head with a digital camera and see if I could just photograph them but never could get the focus clean enough without immense fiddling for each page. Way too labor intensive and then no OCR or other SW help for the images. I also looked at several other DIY book scanner options.
Looked at various flatbed scanners that scan clear to the edge so books can be scanned when only opened up to 90 degrees. None had good reviews or Mac SW back then. A new check indicates none can handle the large sizes we have to scan.
Reviewed the really high end professional book scanners that can cradle a book in a V holder and use digital cameras to capture the images the OCR SW to create the text but cost is prohibitive, $12-15K and up for ones that meet the size requirements.
So I’m back here to see if anyone has any new info or other suggestions.
Problem is the budget is somewhere around $1500 or so. Might be able to stretch that to $2500 if I get more donations but that’s about the limit.