Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
| Photo scanning device advice | Login/Join |
Minor Deity |
I have a Canon all in one printer..it works, but scanning photos is a chore. I just took home boxes of old photos, back the the 1930's..would love to just scan them all, label and set up a file for them without so much pain.. Any ideas? Looking for speed, high res, and easy of moving to USB or somesuch..right now I just want to pull my hair out.. I am not an Apple person so that is out... Thanks in advance..
| ||
|
| Unrepentant Dork Gadfly  |
I bought a scanner a few years ago specifically to scan photos and did a tonne of research before I bought it. It wasn’t terribly expensive, and it does a fantastic job. It is part of the Epson Perfection line, which is still widely recommended (according to a quick Google search to double check). It’s still not a super fast option, as you have to position each photo, but the software that came with it did an excellent job of auto cropping the image, which cut down on time compared to what I had used in the past. I did look at the ones that auto-feed because they are super speedy, but my experience with photocopiers at school made me wary of trusting that auto-feed mechanism with old (often irreplaceable) photos.
| |||
|
Has Achieved Nirvana |
There are any number of companies that will digitize your old photos for you. Check online.
| |||
|
Minor Deity |
With a lot of photos, $$$ I know a person who mentioned over cropping, but PDF before realizing
| |||
|
| Minor Deity |
My cousin, amateur photographer, just bought one. I'll ask what and how he likes it. Very picky.
| |||
|
| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity  |
I would be afraid of sending one-of-a-kind photos in the mail though. Maybe if you can find a place to do it locally and confirm that they do it in-shop?
| |||
|
Has Achieved Nirvana |
Seconding Dol here. I bought a Canon back in 2011 after doing research. Expanding on what she said, the software that comes with the scanner allows you to basically fill the scanner plate with as many photos as it will fit, and as long as there's a bit of a gap between them, it automatically detects that they're separate photos and crops each and saves it as it's own file. This saves an immense amount of time. I could get 6 photos at a time when dealing with those old square-ish ones from the 60s and 70s. Also, you can keep scanning tray after tray of photos and it just puts them in a little buffer. Then when you're done, you can type in a single name (say 'Mom and Dad in Brussels 1974' and it will just append 001, 002, 003, etc to the end of each individual file so saving the files is fast too.
| |||
|
| Has Achieved Nirvana |
A word of caution on the scanning services. I looked into it back in 2011-12. The problem I had was that they wouldn't guarantee the photos would get scanned in any particular order. The reason is they scan them based on size (apparently they have to adjust the machine feeder based on photo size). That is a huge problem if you think about it. Often times you have a group of photos and you can only make sense of what's in one of them based on the other photos it's with. Example, some house and yard I don't recognize in a black and white photo. Well, given that it's in the same set showing my mother's family visiting her aunt, I can tell you that must be her aunt's house in Schenectady. But what happens when they scan that picture out of sequence? It's just a random house and I have no context to figure out what it is. Sometimes you're able to identify people the same way. That 6 year old boy at grandma's house? Must be Uncle Ralph as a boy. What if that picture showed up with no context? Just a random little boy? I'd have no idea. Also they won't return them in the same order either. So you won't even be able to figure it out later. Plus they're not going to give the files meaningful names. SO you'd have to do all kinds of sorting afterward. Anyway, I doubt they've solved those problems, especially the file name issue. I recommend the scanner.
| |||
|
| Minor Deity |
Years ago I did use a service to digitize our old home videos...some from the 40's..but we had multiple copies so sending them off was a no brainer..and well worth the cost. However, as others have mentioned, these are one offs..like the photo my Mom's mom took of her in their living room (with the piano!) in her wedding dress just before my Mom left to get married.. I can use my copier, it does a great job but the software sucks..it sends the photos to obscure folder, names the weird file names and does not do USB...and so slow.... I would love something like the Dr's office do with our card..scan, link, done. Even it if just scan them one after the other into a hopper, where I can rename then and send them off to a folder. I did scan many family slides some years ago..Our lovely HS Photography teacher opened his lab to me after school for about two weeks..He gave me advice on curating and let me have at it with his multi-slide scanner...Some of you may remember, Jack Frost actually hired this lovely man ...Who has since died way too young of pancreatic cancer.. David Prifti
| |||
|
| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I used a service for transferring old reel-to-reel tapes of my dad giving a concert to CD. But I used an NYC based service to make sure no risk of shipping loss and there were a handful of tapes, not thousands, so I wasn’t worried about losing the information contained in the grouping and ordering of the photos. If I had home videos from before the digital era, I’d be comfortable doing the same thing.
| |||
|
| Minor Deity |
I agree, Jon....film is different somehow. But those tiny 3x3 black and white photos are all I have...Film can degrade so the risk is different. These I hold in my hand and are clear as the day they were taken..and I might add.. My grandmother and my Mom notated on the back, the folks in the photos and the date, place.... Would love a scanner that could just scan them in, both sides.
| |||
|
Has Achieved Nirvana |
Our library has scanners and other devices.
| |||
|
| Minor Deity |
Ours has no tech tech that is state of the art and still is closed due to COVID... I am willing to buy a scanner, just want to know if it will work for my application.
| |||
|
| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I scanned the back of a few for that reason. Often just to save the handwriting for posterity. Another thing I did was put the initials of the individuals in the pictures in the file names, in the order of how they appear in the photo. In individual folders of particular photo sets (say my parents trip to Europe in 1974) I would include a text file with whatever extra details I knew about the trip, including which grandparents they parked us kids with. It was a decent amount of work but I just kept thinking how my grandkids would appreciate that someday.
| |||
|
| Powered by Social Strata |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|