We have a simple setup here at home… for photographing an archival collection of our local community newspaper. A tripod on a table, with one leg extending far off to one end of the table and tied off so that the camera hangs over the paper. The digital camera is connected to a laptop and we found software (https://www.darktable.org) that will let us use the laptop as a remote shutter. On top of the nearby bookshelf we have some IKEA led lights (2 of the 5 gooseneck lamps…) pointing down at the paper. The bright lights made a huge difference in photo quality.
Photo, with voluntold child redacted, of the setup is available here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/k53zxtbj86exien/IMG_0029.jpg?dl=1
We took about a hundred photos… and found that the setup is great, except for the creases in the paper. We’re going to order a sheet of non-reflective plexiglass to lay on top of the paper before taking a photo, and start over. Along with some very small bubble levels to get the camera parallel to the tabletop!
Once we have all the jpeg’s then I am looking at using Scantailor (https://scantailor.org) to help clean them up, then merge them into PDF’s (Automator probably) and run them through Adobe Acrobat Pro to do OCR. Final PDF’s will be made available to everyone through the paper’s website.
Feel free to ask questions!
Cheers,
Dave