Foldable portable optical instrument

A foldable optical instrument having an illumination unit, a main housing structure with a table provided thereon, and an optical imaging head for taking an image of an original material which is placed on the table, and illuminated with the illumination unit, said foldable optical instrument further comprising:

• head supporting structure, mounted on said main housing structure, for providing raising-up and folding-down movement for rotatably supporting said optical imaging head and positioning said optical imaging head over said table when raised up:
• an arm, rotatably mounted at one end on said head supporting structure;
• a supporting structure, rotatably mounted on the other end of said arm for rotatably supporting said illumination unit:
• and
• a link mechanism, connected between said supporting structure and said arm, for turning said supporting structure in cooperation with rotational movement of said arm to position said illumination unit at substantially a right angle relative to said arm so as to bring said illumination unit laterally upwardly with respect to said table.

A foldable, portable image input apparatus comprising:

• a main housing including a table on which an original material whose image is inputted by said image input apparatus is placed;
• an image input unit for providing video signals of said original material placed on said table;
• head supporting pole structure, mounted on said main housing so as to be raised up and folded down, for rotatably supporting and positioning said image input head over said table;
• a pair of illumination units for illuminating said original material placed on said table;
• a pair of illumination unit supporting arm structures, mounted for raising-up and folding-down movement on said head supporting pole structure, for supporting said pair of illumination units on both sides of said image input unit, respectively, each said illumination unit supporting arm structure positioning each said illumination unit laterally upwardly with respect to said table;
• and
• a cover, attached to said head supporting pole structure, for covering said pair of illumination units and said pair of illumination unit supporting arm structures between said main housing and said cover when said head supporting pole structure is folded down.