What are you all using for quick/convenient but quality scans?

[MaidenAriana]

Hi all, I am Ariana. I am new to the forum, but have been going to VCFMW since 2018 and have been presenting at more recent ones. I have mostly been active on various retro/vintage discords. A couple of years ago I rescued a bunch of 70s and 80s era ICs, and various boards with lots of documentation from a pallet obtained from a college engineering department's storage. The guy was not sure what to do with all of it. I have finally begun cataloging what I brought home from that exchange and in addition to early 8 bit processors, some of it is actually pinball machine parts/ICs/number displays as well as a bunch of items related to telecom of the time. I want to scan as much of it as I can and add it to the archive if it is not already there. But, my question is what exists for quick/effective/high quality scanning of various sizes of documentation. Is there a good phone app you all tend to use? Or is it still using a printer with a scan function (which I do have but it is not practical for this tbh).

 

[NeXT]

I went to value village and bought a Canoscan Lide 700F on the shelf for $15 and use the Microsoft Scanner and Camera Wizard that came with Windows (7).
That held me over for a decade until I found a much nicer document feed scanner.

 

[Istarian]

If you have a decent camera, taking some good photos would probably be adequate.

Many PDF files of scanned print material are just a set of images anyway unless you go to the trouble of using OCR to get text.

I've used VueScan on Windows 8.1 with an old Epson Perfection 600U (USB only model?) to scan some product documentation (not computer related). Of course the original was a stapled stack of 8.5x11, so easy enough if a little tedious.

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No idea about phone apps and I doubt there's a quick solution unless you have a stack of loose paper and a sheet-fed document scanner.

If you want to use a phone camera, get/make some sort of rig to hold the print material and a visual reference to help you take consistent photos

 

[MaidenAriana]

If you have a decent camera, taking some good photos would probably be adequate.

Many PDF files of scanned print material are just a set of images anyway unless you go to the trouble of using OCR to get text.

I've used VueScan on Windows 8.1 with an old Epson Perfection 600U (USB only model?) to scan some product documentation (not computer related). Of course the original was a stapled stack of 8.5x11, so easy enough if a little tedious.

-----

No idea about phone apps and I doubt there's a quick solution unless you have a stack of loose paper and a sheet-fed document scanner.

If you want to use a phone camera, get/make some sort of rig to hold the print material and a visual reference to help you take consistent photos

That was my thought too.. that there is probably an app or two out there and I can use my fiskars sewing mat as a guide for consistent placement with my workbench cam. I was just hoping someone would say.. I use this and it is free!