You can spend extra money to acquire a flatbed scanner, and if you have a lot of documents to copy, you may want to do that. However, if you do not have that many to copy, or if you do not have the money for a scanner right now, you can use your digital camera for the process. Most digital cameras have fairly good resolution, meaning they will record good, sharp details. This is what you will need to make certain the details on the document do not get dropped.
Instructions
1. Set your digital camera to the highest resolution possible before you start copying documents. If your only choices are RAW and JPEG, choose RAW. If you have a range, go with the best quality. If your digital camera only has one quality level, that will have to do.
2. Attach your digital camera to your tripod. You will need the kind of tripod that allows you to point your camera downward, straight at the feet of the tripod. If you do not have this type of tripod, you can use another kind, but you will need to tape your documents to a wall or other vertical surface to make your copies.
3. Place your document on a table or even the floor beneath your camera and tripod combination. Make sure you use a smooth, flat surface to avoid wrinkles or bends in the documents. You will need to be able to get to the camera's viewfinder to compose and focus your document image if you use a digital single-lens reflex camera. You can set it once, then use your camera's autofocus feature for further document copying.
4. Attach your light source. You can use the pop-up flash on most DSLRs or other digital cameras, but check to make sure the flash that focuses directly at the paper does not wash out the details of the document. If at all possible, get the flash off the camera. If you have a separate electronic flash unit, angle it toward the document to avoid this washout. Check this with a sample image before continuing to make sure the angle does not cast poor lighting.
5. Take at least two images of each document to make sure you have the image properly recorded. This is especially useful if you have a lot of documents to copy. Upload your images from the camera or memory card to your computer. Crop and adjust them there.
Tips Warnings
Use a copy stand if you have one to copy documents with a digital camera. A camera stand is essentially a baseboard attached to two lights at either side and an L-shaped arm that comes up the back and out over the baseboard. This is the best way to copy a lot of documents with a digital camera, but copy stands may be expensive or hard to come by.
If you have to tape your documents to a wall to copy, make certain you have enough lighting to use a higher shutter speed. Too little light will decrease the shutter speed, which may cause blurriness in the images if your move the tripod or do the images hand-held.
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