digital camera control

    The camera part is easy.  The page turning part is hard.
I have friends at the Internet Archive who struggle with this
problem, and it's taken years to get working book scanners.

                John Nagle

I'm not worried about the page turning part; I have that figured out.
Just tell me how to get the camera part to work.

Kirtas has sold a commercial model for about 3-4 years. Co-developed
with Xerox in the late 1990s, until they dropped the project. Most of
the whole-book digitization projects these days use a Kirtas scanner or
one type or another.

-- Gordon

What sort of computer are you using to control the page turning
hardware?

A decent quality industrial camera interfaced to a PC capture system,
with a decent lens should do it.  Then use a trigger from the page
turning hardware to signal the PC to store the image, after it has
turned
to a new page.
Are the images monochrome or do you need a color system?

Pete B.

I wasn't sure if I wanted the camera controlled by software or by the
microcontroller.  The entire page turning mechanism would be
controlled by a microcontroller, and was thinking that the
microcontroller should also control the camera.  After entire book has
been imaged I would like the camera to automatically download the
images to the computer.  After speaking to some camera experts, I
learned that most high end cameras have an electronic shutter release
connected to a switch, and that if I rewired it and connected a relay
or an electronic switch than it could be automatically controlled.  If
this could be controlled by an electronic switch, how could I connect
it to my microcontroller?

You need what could be a program controlled I/O line, sometimes called
a strobe line.  These are readily available in industrial control
systems, and your
micro probably has some spare 5 V user programmed I/O lines.  Then you
need
an input on your camera system that accepts 5V level signals, whatever
it is
it has to match.  You might also use an open collector or opto
isolated interface
not that you need the isolation but some boards just already have
them.  No
way to tell you if you don't give specifics.  You need to read up on
this, in a
microcontroller manual or system integration manual.  I suggest you
try Google.