Alignment when photographing document

Qualitymark

May I ask for some help from you kindly snappers?

I'm photographing hundreds of old documents, using a Canon digital camera. Very nice images, but one problem.

I photograph each document, front and back, with the head to the left. Now, sometimes when I go to process the resulting file, it's shown in portrait mode and sometimes it's in landscape mode and I have to rotate it.

Is there any way to set the camera to automatically turn a particular set of photos to portrait view, although photographed in landscape view?

pullandbang

There is an auto rotate option in the menu - not sure exactly where as I don't have my camera to hand, but it was easy to find. You can switch it on or off.

Qualitymark

pullandbang wrote: »

There is an auto rotate option in the menu - not sure exactly where as I don't have my camera to hand, but it was easy to find. You can switch it on or off.

Fished around but can't find it; maybe it's not on this camera.

Kenny Logins

Are the documents lying flat?

Qualitymark

Kenny Logins wrote: »

Are the documents lying flat?

They are.

Kenny Logins

Qualitymark wrote: »

They are.

So the camera may be struggling to tell which way the picture should be oriented?

Qualitymark

Kenny Logins wrote: »

So the camera may be struggling to tell which way the picture should be oriented?

Could that be it?

I've found some more settings on a wheel on top of the camera; one is C for 'custom', but I'm a bit nervous of it. I might play with it later.

Kenny Logins

Yep. There is an axis sensor in the camera but if you're holding it over a document lying horizontally it wouldn't take more than the tiniest movement to flip the orientation.

Qualitymark

So if I put the paper on a hill-shaped yokey, you think it'll autocorrect? Will try that!

5uspect

Which camera is it? The auto rotate option is usually consistently in the same place in the menu.

Qualitymark

It's a Canon S90. Can't see that menu, unfortunately. How do you get to that? When I press the 'menu' button, I see three tabs at the top: one with a camera, one with a hammer and spanner, and one with a star.

The star says "My Menu settings" and is empty.

The camera says:
Digital Zoom
AF-Point Zoom
AF-assist Beam
and a lot of other stuff I don't understand either.

The hammer-and-spanner says:
Mute
Sound Options
Hints & Tips
LCD Brightness
and a lot of other settings.

There are various buttons: on the top there's the on-off, the press-to-take-a-picture and something mysteriously called Ring Func, which doesn't seem to do anything. There's a switchy yoke that seems to set it from taking photos of distant pine trees to single pine trees, oddly; it's set at the centre; some kind of piney compromise.

There's a wheel offering a choice of Auto (the setting I have it at, for safety's sake), P, TV, AV, M, C, a little videocamera picture, SCN or a candle. The candle, it seems is for low light. (Don't worry, the camera explains what these are for when you switch to them. However, it also produces a visual saying that you can change the settings by using + or - though there don't appear to be any + or - buttons.

I tried taking photos on a slanty yoke today, and got slightly better results, more of the documents upright, but still not all of them.

Kenny Logins

What angle slant yoke? Near vertical will be best.

Qualitymark

Kenny Logins wrote: »

What angle slant yoke? Near vertical will be best.

Near vertical isn't possible - delicate old documents. Angle would be less than 45 degrees, on one of those sponge yokes used in the libraries.