A method and a device for the optical scanning of a document by means of a line camera in which the document may be scanned at variable speed. Since on the one hand a line frequency by which the individual lines are scanned is based on the speed of movement, and on the other hand binning is carried out automatically on the basis of the speed of movement, wherein the line frequency is multiplied by a binning factor n, it is possible for a document to be scanned very easily and simply over a wide speed range. Color values are preferably corrected by means of an amplification factor, so that the brightness of the images produced by this means is constant over the whole speed range.