Of course, let's now look at the issue from:
OK, let's. :)
1) Cost viewpoint
2) Convenience for the average Joe who is not interested in DIY.
3) Archival quality (not of interest to everyone).
Regarding 1), a person can buy the PlusTek OpticBook 3600 for about $250 or so. The web site about this scanner is:
I was about this close (holds fingers close together) to buying one, but I'm on an extremely limited budget and already had the camera. An additional benefit (as you note) is that the camera has other uses, whereas taking pictures of scenic spots with an OpticBook is not going to work very well.
How much in supplies, parts, etc., not to mention the camera, does it cost for your solution?
$15, assuming you don't burn out lightbulbs too fast. I'm using a $5 gooseneck lamp from Target and a fairly large acrylic frame that was around $10. The Gimp is free. The OCR program is a cost either way. I don't use the rubber bands to hold pages anymore, but they're cheap, too.
Regarding 2). What if a person is not interested in DIY stuff? There are a lot of people like that out there! <smile/>
Then, by all means, they should get a scanner. (BTW, I'd like to lower the DIY factor by creating a Cygwin-free executable of my image-processing program. Anyone who can walk me through it will earn my gratitude.)
Regarding 3), can you achieve effective 600 dpi results (including factoring in camera focus issues) for a college textbook-size page?
I doubt it--but how often does a task really call for 600 dpi anyhow? But I agree, it's more problematic for large books. Fortunately, everything I've wanted to do so far has been small enough that it really hasn't been an issue. Vol. 1 of Jefferson Davis's history of the Confederate government was about the largest I've done, and I wouldn't want to go much larger.
To conclude, what I am NOT saying is that it is impossible to get good page scans using a digital camera -- what I am saying is that it is not easy nor convenient to do (especially for the average Joe), and not that cost effective, either. There is a big difference.
I guess I'm stuck differing with you, or would be if I had a compiled executable to distribute. Given the camera, the computer, and the OCR software, the additional investment is minimal. And given practice, I can go through pages as quickly, or maybe even more quickly, with the camera than I could with the scanner. (Note that it's a fairly old USB 1 scanner, so newer ones might take some of that time off.) As noted, I do have a scanner, and I have used it on a recent project to scan the illustrations. It's no big deal if the text is photographed with the camera not quite parallel to the page, but it's a problem for pictures. (The scanner also has built-in Moire reduction in the software.) I'm not asking the world to give up on scanning, but I am pointing out that this alternative is not nearly as hard as I thought it would be, and as I suspect others still think. Geoff