Foldable Book Stand for Camera Scanning

For a foldable book stand you will need:

hard cardboard
tape
knife
ruler - triangle with 45 degrees corners is best
pencil
scissors

Mark pieces to be cut.

Pieces needed:
2x big rectangles (A4 for example or bigger)
4x triangles for "legs", corners 45 and 90 degrees, longest side correlates with short side of the previous rectangles
2x "leg holders" - thin rectangles for holding "legs" in position when in use
1x thin rectangle for book spine - leave this out if books of your interest tend to be very thin

Cut the pieces using knife. (Scissors are no good on hard cardboard. Edges do not have to be super precise.)

Cut slots into "legs" (triangles) as shown on image.

2 More Images

Lay down on working surface [big rectangle] - [spine] - [other big rectangle] longer edges side by side.
A little gap between them does no harm, maybe even benefits.
Tape them together on one side.

Turn them around.
Tape the other side while you hold the pieces folded together (see images).
You will get such an arrangement that can be folded one way.

Arrange "legs" onto bigger rectangles and mark slots onto "leg holders". Cut the slots.

Check the positioning of the legs against the slots again (see images for exact positioning), and tape the legs to the big part.

Turn legs up (90 degrees) and tape the inner side of them.

Now they should fold down to the inside and up to 90 degrees but not fold out.

For working position insert leg holder slots to leg slots.
For storage position, take leg holders off and fold the thing slim.

• From dead scanner - perfect size :)
• From image frame - can be borrowed and put back later.

1. Arrange desk lamp, the stand and tripod in line.
2. Open the first page to photograph, lay the glass on it.
3. Turn off camera flash, use indoor setting for better initial white balance.
4. Check and adjust the framing, use zoom if needed.
5. Check if there is a reflection from the lamp in camera view, move the lamp to get most even lightning without a reflection. It does not have to perfectly even to get a readable file.
6. Focus the camera and take picture. Lift the glass and turn the page. Repeat.

• If the book is very thin and not bigger than the glass and stand when open, you can take picture of both pages at the same time. With thick book, take pictures of even or odd pages first and others later.
• When you finish with one side pages and switch to other side, or when you skip parts of the book, take a picture of your hand in between - it makes it lot easier to distinguish the sequences later looking at image thumbnails.
• If you make a mistake, for example a unfocused image or a double image, delete it right away in the camera, it would be a pain to find and discard that image later. And they mess page order up if they stay there.
• Pay attention to pages that have just few lines and are blank in the center - my camera had trouble focusing on such.