Many museums and collections publish digital photographs or scans of objects held in their collections in online-accessible databases. What are the epistemological issues at stake when an analogue object is digitised with the aim to ‘illustrate’, ‘document’ or ‘represent’ its analogue original? This essay tackles the question based on practical, hands-on experiences that the author obtained through testing a method for digitising lantern slides. The digital copies achieved in digitisation projects, the author argues, ...