Torsie, yes I understand the post lunch thing . . But I must say the effect is staggeringly good. Oops, back to a good lunch - eh?

Seriously, though, in the future I will now need a very good reason to getting "busy" with my Epson scanner! It was just so fast and simple. I whipped through some 30 pics within 20 minutes - or even less . . could have been 10 to 15 minutes. Others should try this.

Grazie

On shoots, that's almost exactly what we do every time :use a surface and a lamp (on the *side* to avoid reflexion).
We did it a few times outside on the back window of the van, holding the photos at the base with the wiper and using sunlight.
THEN, we could have lunch outside... ; )

Fridges with magnets aren't bad too when shooting in people's places... so you can steal a sandwich, make a few shots and find a "good professionnal reason" to go outside for the rest of the shots and use the previous method ... : P

Assuming you had a very good video camera this could be better than using a scanner. The camera / CCD combination is optimised to the video sampling etc so you avoid the aliasing issues of converting HiRes stills to video. I cab get a better resulting video using scanned images but it can be extra work for that last bit of resolution that you can pull just before you start ot get artifacts.
I think you can buy a purpose built rig for doing this as well with proper illumination.

It really depends on your workflow. Most news stations shoot stills by hand for local stories. Down and dirty.

Pros - fast and can look just fine.

Cons - resolution is limited to 720x480, you may zoom or pan a shot and later realize on the timeline that the timing is off or you shouldn't have zoomed or panned. Its fixable but not like being able to just adjust the pan and crop properties of the clip. When I scan stills for a client I scan at 300 dpi and give them an archive CD at the end of the job. So scanning is a must for that.

Back in my linear Video Toaster days, we had an engineer build a motion graphic table for us, even before I could find them commercially. Only could do one direction at that time, but we shot all of our photos like that. Switched some live.

Mike

I have shot the stills with a Canon XL1-s and even if they have glass in front of them they are exceptional in quality, surprised the crap out of me even with auto focus on.

JJK

You got it JJK! Me too! I was astoundewd how they have appeared, EWVEN within an MPEG1! Client was wel pleased too.

Grazie

A friend of mine was cleaning out their garage, and gave me an old, but good condition copy stand. This one has twin gooseneck lamps and an adjustable pillar with a tripod mount on it. You shoot downward onto a grey pedestal/mounting area. Look on E-bay or government surplus auctions, and see if you can find one. They should be pretty cheap, since they're now seen as "obsolete" equipment. It also shouldn't be too hard to build one.

I've been using my copy stand with my PD-150 more and more instead of my scanner. By adjusting the lighting, you can bring out the texture of the paper fiber -- really brings some depth into the image vs. the flat look of scanned material. Not surprisingly, the resulting images match the tone and feel of video shot with the same camera better, too. No JPEG jaggies!

I've also experimented using a high-resolution digital camera on the copy stand for document and flat art copying. Much, much faster than the old "preview, wait, align, scan" routine. Plenty of pixels, too.

I still use the scanner for things that I want to pan and scan in Vegas, mainly because I don't trust my panning/zooming technique with the camera. I find I can closely match the look of camera-shot art using Vegas Color Curves and a small bit of gaussian blur, but this is time consuming.

I use myself a Canon A95 on a tripod for intensive, non critical, photo scanning. With the included controll software, i can remote control the camera and scan directly on the computer at a speed unreachable with a scanner... (auto WB capability is also a bonus) . The only tricky part is avoiding reflections from the lighting source

This would be similar to the argument in my son's stop motion forum. The argument is between shooting against a green screen and then compositing a back drop, or simply placing a photograph behind the scene as a backdrop and animating against that.

In every case I have seen, shooting against a photograph looks more effective, and the only reason to use green screen is when a moving background is required.

Every 'outdoors' shot in this movie ... http://www.rstudios.brickfilms.com/ColdComfort/Film.html ... is filmed against pictures taken from the web and printed on my very ordinary Canon S500. The camera used was a Logitech Quickcam 4000 CCD webcam and the film was edited entirely in Vegas 4.0e.

I have a friend who wanted to scan 10,000 slides in a hurry so he could share them with his dad whose mind was slipping away due to Alzheimers. Speed was of the essence. He set up a still camera, put the slides in a projector, and snapped pictures of the screen. He was able to "scan" 20-30 pictures a minute. By contrast, a slide scanner would be about one minute per slide. He completed his project in a few days and got his dad's input while his dad's mind was still intact.

The downside to his approach -- and to the similar thing Grazie is doing -- is as follows:

1. As already mentioned you won't be able to zoom without creating noticeable artifacts.

2. Compared to scanning negatives, where the infrared channel on most scanners will automatically eliminate dust and spots, this method will still give you spots.

3. Lighting. This is by no means impossible to solve, but you do need to pay attention to lighting. A film scanner (or a flatbed scanner for prints). has no problem with lighting. However, if you take a picture of a shiny print, the specular reflections are a difficult thing to avoid. If you have a copy stand or similar device that puts the diffuse bulbs at a 45 degree angle to the work and has the camera at the proper distance, the glare can be avoided, but if you are sloppy, the results will not be pretty.

4. Depth. Detail. Density. Scanners have more of each of these. If you do any manipulation of your image in Vegas, you'll want more of these things. Zooming has already been mentioned, but panning and rotation, and also certain special effects will reveal limitations in your image.

So, if you need a picture that is not going to be zoomed, and will be used at full size or less, Grazie's method is a great time saver and should yield good results, with the caveats noted above.

The other nice thing about the copy stand is that it works really well for three-dimensional objects, too.

Try cramming a 4-inch tall toy Godzilla figurine into a scanner!

John! Now THAT'S what I wanted to hear! The caveats. Excellent feedback. The " Depth. Detail. Density. " . .er .. the 3Ds ? Now that I'm not going to forget quickly.

Thanks JM!

Grazie