Scanning and uploading car mags

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Yo, does anyone on here have any knowledge about a good way to scan and upload car mags? I've got thousands of the bastards, and soon i'm gonna have to throw them out I think as i just cant justify keeping them all up in the loft. BUT what if there was some way of rapidly scanning them in (maybe chop the spines off and feed them into a document scanner) and uploading them to the web? I've got so many it would take me years to do them with a normal scanner but maybe theres some technology that will speed that right up.

 

Then, where could they go on the internet? I imagine a full magazine scanned in at a resolution high enough to read the text would be a pretty massive filesize. Are there any public sites that could host that kind of bumf?

 

Any ideas gang?

 

I would be up for spending a few groat on this project if it was a goer as it would mean I could still have my massive library of car bo11ox, but without cluttering up my loft and the walk-in fridge in Fatha_Bol's old butchers shop.

 

DISCUSS

[carlo]

Out of interest is there a particular reason you wanted them uploaded to the web (apart from purely philanthropic motives)? Storage space on the web is far more expensive than storage in an average computer's hard drive, which would have no problem swallowing up thousands and thousands of magazine pages.

 

I've often thought about doing this with my 2000+ Autocars, but after the first few pages of the first mag think "bollocks to this" and give up. There's something nice about reading a mag too, assuming you have room for them.

 

Apart from this I've no idea how you'd scan them in bulk.

[trigger]

I've been doing this for nearly 5 years now and uploaded tens of thousands of scanned pages, trust me, It's not for the faint hearted, I don't know if it's possible to do it in bulk but I individually scan each page carefully trying not to damaged the spline (especially on the older 1950-60's stuff) on a normal scanner, before tagging and labling each one then upload them to Flickr.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/triggersca ... llections/

[Tayne]

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[wackywacerwill]

We've a big photocopier at work which scans too via a top feed, it's an old machine the likes of which can be found in many corner shops. If you pull the staples then feasibly the whole lot would feed through at the touch of a button.

I'm new to all this office lark mind so may be overlooking the obvious...

[cort16]

it's not easy that's for sure. no-one know how google did it until they patented it and subsequently have open source the designs. If you have some spare cash and an old vacuum cleaner you can build one.

 

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/11/google-book-scanner/

 

There's companies out there that do it but they'll probably charge a fortune. Maybe an A3 scanner would be a good bet so you can do two page at a time and not have to fanny around with folding it over or stopping it sliding off the scanner.

[TimothyClaypole]

I've tested a few at work and they are pretty nippy (the sheet feed ones) but for some reason they are quite expensive for what they are.

 

Scanners used to be cheapish but they seem to have gone from ones under £100 to a shed load that costs hundreds.

[cort16]

I bet the paper the mags are made out of would get mashed up in the sheet feeder quick enough.

[Richard]

I don't do that many scans but when I do I use my camera on a tripod. If you take a little time to get the lighting and the framing right (which I never do) you get perfectly acceptable results and it's a lot quicker than buggering about with a scanner.

[keef]

Used to have sheet feeders at work. I am sure they would have improved by now, but as has been pointed out mags are usually quite thin paper.

 

I use Flickr Groups to collate my interests.

 

Just added two new groups. :-

 

http://www.flickr.com/groups/austinprincess/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/austinambassador/

[beko1987]

I use an android app called CamScanner. It uses your phone camera, batches up a book/magazine worth of pics then spits it out into a PDF file. You have to be steady at taking the pictures though.

 

Google docs (I pay a fiver a year for 20gb) and voila - https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4YfVzZhLwvIdkRpeU56ZV9VbEE/edit

[406V6]

Using a camera on a tripod will be quick and give good enough quality for the web. The tricky part is getting the lighting even enough. A separate flash gun on relatively low power ought to do it but a bright conservatory for example might be enough. Having an electronic remote release will help to avoid camera shake. If you want to be really slick, many cameras allow "tethered shooting" where you plug the camera into the computer and control everything from there. By shooting both pages at once the whole process ought to be almost as quick as turning the pages. You just need to crop in your editing program and create a web image. Lightroom would be great for this but I appreciate that only the keenest photographers would shell out for it.

[Wilko220]

Agree that mag pages would probably get mashed up in a feeder.

As said before, an A3 scanner may be the way forward - here's one for 99p: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Epson-GT-1500 ... 2c6bce9e30

[Micrashed]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HandyScan-TSN ... 337e20f4c1

[barrett]

Absolutely no advice to give you, sorry, but before you start pulling the staples out of mags and whatnot or sending them to the tip can you let us know what you are getting shot of as I'm sure there are a few things I would like to take off your hands for some beer tokens. THANX