Readers’ Tips

Digitise old books taking iphone photos

My compliments on Issue 542’s ‘How To’ article on digitising old photos and slides. You asked readers to share some of their experiences, so here’s mine.

For many years I’ve considered digitising my late father’s RAF pilot log books, wanting to share it with my brother and his family. There are 600 pages across eight books, covering 1941-1966, totalling in excess of 8,000 flying hours.

Despite owning several flatbed scanners and tons of computing kit, it was looking like a Herculean task. After some thought I opted for an overhead iphone photography solution (pictured). I considered many scanning apps, including Scanbot ( https://scanbot.io/en), but went with a straight photo.

In total, I spent £25 on this one-off project, using: a Utebit Camera Copy Stand ( www.snipca.com/30259); a Zacro 360 Camera Clamp ( www.snipca. com/30261); a Camkix camera-shutter remote control ( www.snipca.com/ 30263); and the Reflector 3 Mac screenmirroring software ( www.airsquirrels. com/reflector, free for seven days).

Any smartphone camera or small tablet will work - the lens quality is largely irrelevant. I did it last August, using natural light through my windows. On my iphone I had the gridlines turned on, and HDR and Live Photo switched off.

Once set up, I was able to quickly turn the pages while seated, checking the monitor and pressing the remote button. I uploaded it to Dropbox and sent links to it to my brother in San Diego. Total elapsed time was about half a day - not too shabby!