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genius use of equipment

It’s a 1/2.3’ sensor, not a very large area for capturing photons. You’ll probably have to build a rig for getting clean results at the end. Hopefully you have access to manual controls; use the lowest iso you can, a moderate aperture to increase depth of field and reduce lens aberrations, and build a light box with white paper to try to uniformize light coming from the pop-up flash.

If the camera allows outputting raw files, you don’t really have to bother with light balance etc, as you can change it in a raw processing software, using the color of the support you’re drawing on (hopefully white paper) as reference. Denoising may be cleaner too

Yeah, once you get your own rig set up, it’s the kind of thing that you may use for years.

For me with really big pieces, like 3’ on a side, is that no matter what I do I either am getting too much distortion around the edges, or I can’t get it lit properly.

Like, if you put REALLY HARD light on it, sometimes the light goes right through the top surface of your drawing and you can actually see the sketch underneath it.

Trying to capture what the human eye sees with a camera can be a real trick :)

Thankyou soo much for all the advice. <3

I managed to figure out the light and contrast settings. I tried a few things with my light sources. However, this spures some ideas. I have way too much scrap wood on hand. These examples you gave me seem relatively simple. My synth cabinets and even my lab table I built from scratch has way more complexity then these jigs. Should be relatively simple to draft something on paper and then build my own jig.
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Incase your wondering I plan to to do both timelaps art and in general photos for capturing my art. I will keep everything you mentioned here in mind. Again thanks for the point in the right direction. A sure blessing from God is what you been. May God bless you. <3

And, actually, you don’t even have to build some sort of rig. You can do this with any tripod. Just make sure the back leg is fastened to the table, and you’re set to go.

Just don’t expect good results the first time, keep experimenting, and when you find something that works mark everything with tape so you can get it back into that position and make notes of the settings you used.

I mean, eventually you draw something too freaking big to scan anyway, so every eventually uses a camera. The trick is just to remember what the scanner is doing, and then try to replicate that.

… while also acknowledging the scanner was an attempt to replicate what was being done with cameras, but better …

Reproducing images, and getting them into different formats, is a snake that keeps eating its own tail.

@LP2Lily
It is possible to do what you are trying to do, and sometimes using a camera as a scanner bed does work very well. But on problem with cameras is that the closer you get to the edge of the lens the more distortion you’ll see.

Like, at one university I went to the large bed scanners were all cameras on tripods held over a brightly lit surface. Those were built from wood, but a metal tripod also works and can be more flexible.

The trick is to get the camera perfectly parallel to the surface being scanned, and to get enough even and consistent light on the image.

The stand can end up looking pretty home brew, but you can get really good results.

It isn’t always better than using a scanner, but there are situations where you actually can get significantly better results with a camera than a scanner.

Above all, making sure you are putting enough light on the image that you are taking a picture of, and making absolutely certain the camera is held in the proper alignment to the image is important. And the more you can avoid using the WHOLE imageable area on the camera the better you’ll be.

If you see too much distortion in the image even after doing all of this, then there’s a chance your lens is just not giving a flat enough result, and you might have to do some PhotoShop wizardry to get the image to be ‘flat’ in the final result.

Quick update
I found some articles on changing the settings
I got max resolution, but looking into fixing the lighting and flash settings.

If I could at least get advice on camera angle and common mistakes? Thanks

The title is rhetorical. I already know the answer. However, I really don’t know how to get a reasonable photo of my art. I have made a bunch of sketches thus far. I just could not figure out how to get my expensive camera on the right settings. That and the angle a piece of art should be and lighting. I am not looking for a full explanation. Who has the time to give a free class to some random dude on the forums anyway? Yea, don’t worry about giving me step by step instructions unless you want to. Just enough to get me headed in the right direction. Thanks in advance to anyone who can get me started.
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Camera
Cannon PowerShot SX530 HS
Nothing special. Got it with a extra money that showed up in my budget. Sort of over my head if ya know what I mean