Hasta La Gadget!

Last week, we told you about the home-made scanner camera featured at Make magazine. Three weeks ago, we kicked up a bit of controversy when we told you to throw away your old scanner. Today, we take our own advice and, with the help of a sharp knife and a roll of gaffer tape, turn an old Canonscan LiDE 50 into a working camera.

First, the kit. We have an old, USB bus-powered scanner, three packs of black A4 foam-core board (with three sheets in each pack), a magnifying glass and a roll of gaffer tape. The shoebox is just there to keep things tidy. I also used a craft knife and an old aluminum baking sheet as a straight edge for cutting.

Remove the lid from the scanner. You don’t have to, but when you come to take pictures, the lid makes things a little unwieldy. This model has a pop-off top so it will be easy to put back on when the project is over.

Next, measure and cut the boards. I chose the slightly more expensive A4 sheets over the bigger sizes. This means less cutting, and as the scanner is made for A4 pages, it fits rather well. I used one of the other sheets as a guide to draw a line across this one, giving me a square. Repeat for three more sheets.

Here we have the sides of the first, inner box. There will be two boxes, one inside the other, to allow the lens to be moved in relation to the scanner bed. This will enable focusing. Here’s the first box:

Next, place another sheet  next to the box as in the picture below and mark a line for cutting. Transfer this line onto three more sheets.

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed the first mistake. The outside sheets need to be the same size as the inner ones, plus the thickness of two sheets. I only added the thickness of one sheet, so my outer box doesn’t quite meet at the corners. Gaffer tape, though, is very forgiving, and quickly fixes things up.

Here we see the outer and inner boxes, complete with the lid for the
outer box. Next, we need a hole for the lens, which has now been freed
from the prison of its handle and frame by some judicious bending and
snapping.

Almost there. A quick bit of tape around the lens will stop it from falling out, and then the lens board needs to be fixed to the boxes. Make sure all joints are well sealed against light.

That’s it! A few extra pieces of card are taped around the edges to block light from entering the scanner. You could, as the Make article suggests, use a thick baseboard to make moving the camera on and off the scanner a little easier. I just went at it with lovely, lovely gaffer tape. In fact, this is where I messed up for the second time — I taped the outer box down, meaning that it couldn’t slide. This was fixed with a few slashes and yet more tape.

Next, on to the picture taking.

The scanner software is already installed, so I just opened up Image Capture on my MacBook Pro and connected the USB cable. It lives! As the motor whirred into life, I waited for the blurry image of my lazy flatmate to appear on the screen. The scanner finished its first pass and a picture appeared. I was expecting to have to make a few adjustments, but didn’t quite expect this:

That, if you can believe is, is not an ultrasound scan of an unborn babe, but my flatmate stuck in front of the living room Mac, watching yoga videos on YouTube and generally not getting a job. If you look carefully you can just make out the… Who are we kidding? It’s junk. I tried pointing the camera out the window in the hope of grabbing more light. I also made a smaller aperture out of black card, in order to cut out some of the sunlight and also increase the depth of field.

How did it turn out? Much the same as the picture above. I brought the camera back in and pointed it at my flatmate’s drum kit (the sound of which helps me to concentrate when blogging). I tried moving the lens in and out to get a sharp picture. Here’s the result (The snare is on the left):

Clearly I need to do some more experimentation, but the theory is sound, and it looks much like the camera in the Makezine article. It’s possible that the magnifying glass I chose is just plain wrong for this sized box, so I’ll try another one of those. I’ll be taking this outside over the holiday weekend (the bus-powered scanner means I don’t need a power cable) and I’ll post any pictures that actually work.

In the meantime, it’s your turn. This only took around an hour, including a cigarette break, so go try it. If you have any succees, post the pictures to the Gadget Lab Flickr Group. See you there.

This article is also featured on the Wired How-To Wiki, where you can edit and add to it.

Make a Scanner Camera [Wired How-To Wiki]