Debbie,
I am afraid there really is no one single digital camera that could be
recommended for use in archives. I have used cameras costing from £50 to
£25,000 and all fitted their purpose.
So it really depends on what you want to do with the camera, what quality
images you wish to create and how deep your pockets.
If you want to set something up to produce images of a high quality and
money is not an object, then you would most probably want to look at a
large scanning camera. Cost would be in the thousands, most probably over
10 thousand.
If on the other hand you want to capture pragmatically 'reasonable' quality
images, it is quite possible to use one of the professional one-shot
cameras made by Canon or Nikon. Examples such as the Canon 10D/300D or
Nikon D100 or D70 are all possible and cost from under £1000 to about
£1500, although you would also need to invest in some lighting as well.
I wrote a report on this approach for VADS a while ago....which should be
readable from here:
http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/CaseStudy.pdf
If you are just looking for a small digital compact....then I would warn
you that quality can be rather elusive.....not that they 'can't' do
it....more that it is hard to persuade them to be reliable and constantly
produce images of a reasonable quality. I have done this.....and it can
work....but I would always advise against unless your budget enforces this
approach. When buying compacts for this kind of use, I always advise
buying from one of the major manufacturers and choose your camera based on
the biggest size of ccd and also the ability to capture into either TIFF or
RAW image formats.
As far as Image editing programs go......there are quite a few
available....and yet I can only really recommend one: Adobe Photoshop is
now so much better than all competition, that if you can afford it you
should really get it. If you can't, then you can go for either Photoshop
Elements, which is cut down version of Photoshop or for PaintShop Pro,
which many colleges and universities have bought site licenses for and is
certainly cheaper.
Hope this is of help.
If you want any more guidance, please do not hesitate to get in touch. You
might also find some of the articles on the TASI Web site of use.
cheers
eib
At 30/09/2004 15:49, Debbie Usher wrote:
>Dear All,
>
>Can anyone recommend a digital camera for use in an Archive?
>
>The intended use is to take pictures of documents and bound volumes that
>are too fragile for photocopying and also to take pictures of photographs
>in tightly bound photograph albums.
>
>On a related subject can anyone recommend some imaging software, especially
>for photographs, that they have liked or found easy to use?
>
>With Many Thanks
>
>Debbie Usher, Archivist
>Middle East Centre Archive
>St Antony's College
>Oxford OX26JF
>UK
>
>tel. +44 1865 284706
>tel. UK 01865 284706
>email: [log in to unmask]
>web: http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/areastudies/meca.shtml
Ed I Bremner
BremWeb Imaging
[log in to unmask]
http://www.bremweb.co.uk
h: 01822 832574 m: 07973 335509
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