How can I use a digital camera to photograph pages of text and be able to read them on my computer?

Question

I know it can be done, but I don't know how. It would be more convenient , better and faster than using a scanner. I can put the pics into my comp. but they are barely readable. camera is 6MP

Answer 1

Why don't you just scan the document? I can;t see how it would be of good enough clarity to read taken by a camera. If you have no scanner, but know someone who has, just ask them to scan it making sure its saved as a jpeg

Answer 2

6MP is more than enough to copy an A4 page of typescript. I think you need to either use a camera with macro ability or an extra close-up lens to enable you to fill the frame with a sharp image. Certainly a lot easier than humping a scanner around. I've done it several times using a 2MP camera with close-up lens add-on or a 5MP with macro setting. NB in the average office type environment lighting may be forcing a long exposure with camera shake resulting; you might want to use a manual short exposure even if it gives a greyish image

Answer 3

Look through your cameras picture settings (it should say how in the manual) they some times have a setting to photograph text. Other than that get close to the page if it is A4 paper only do half a page at a time and don't use any zoom as this will add more noise to the picture and will make it harder to read the more you zoom. Make sure res and pic quality are right up.

Answer 4

dunno if it's faster or more accurate than native Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on the scanner, but yes, you can OCR any picture of text.