Ultra-wide capture: fit A3 and bound books in a single frame
The standard 1× camera on most phones covers about 70° of field of view. Paper Scan's ultra-wide lens extends this to roughly 120°, letting you capture full pages from a normal seated position. Hold the phone 30 cm above an A4 page and the entire page fills the frame; the same distance works for A3 handouts, whiteboards and most bound materials.
Edge detection, perspective correction and shadow removal run the moment the capture button is pressed, producing a flat page rather than a photograph of paper.
When ultra-wide helps
- Large flat documents. A3 meeting handouts, folded maps, restaurant menus, magazine spreads and posters. The wider field of view captures the page without standing up or stepping back.
- Bound books and manuals. Stiff spines force the page into a slight curve near the binding, which costs text in the inner margin. Holding the phone slightly further away reduces the curve optically before any software correction runs.
- Whiteboards and presentation screens. Capture the full board or screen from a seated position in a classroom or meeting room. Perspective correction handles the keystone effect of viewing the surface at an angle.
- Restricted workspace. When the surrounding area is occupied with coffee cups, hands or other documents, the wider field of view captures the page without needing physical room to step back.
When to use the 1× lens instead
The ultra-wide lens resolves less detail per square centimetre, since the same image sensor is spread across a wider area. Use the standard 1× lens for:
- Dense small text. Contracts, legal documents, footnotes, fine print. Corner sharpness matters more than field of view.
- Glossy media. Laminated IDs, magazine covers, plastic-coated surfaces. The wider aperture gathers more reflection at the edges.
- Low-light conditions. The ultra-wide lens typically has a smaller maximum aperture and produces more noise in dim environments.
The lens toggle is a single tap in the viewfinder.
Shooting best practices
- Even lighting. Indirect light from a window performs better than a single overhead spotlight. Shadows crossing the page are the most common cause of blur and OCR misreads.
- Stable hands. Rest elbows on the table. The shutter waits for a stable frame before firing, so a brief pause usually replaces a re-scan.
- Correct focus. If auto-focus selects the wrong subject (the desk, a finger, the page edge), tap the centre of the text before capture.
- Flat pages. For bound documents, press the page flat with the other hand. Pages that bow toward the spine lose characters near the gutter.
The ultra-wide lens requires iPhone 11 or newer, or a flagship Android device released in the last several years. Devices without an ultra-wide camera fall back to the 1× lens automatically; the rest of the capture pipeline is unaffected.