Has anyone ever digitized family photos?

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29 July 2023, 07:10 PM

Cindysphinx

Has anyone ever digitized family photos?

My MIL and FIL both died, and they left a huge amount of family photos. There are at least 9 large bins, maybe more.

Right now, these bins are at my house, and they have got to go.

Ideally, I would ship the photos to a company that would digitize them and possibly then discard them. Each family member could have a thumb drive with the whole collection.

I've looked around online, and I am seeing prices like a thousand dollars or more. Whatever, I'll pay it and have the estate reimburse me.

What I do not want is the digitizing company to keep control of the photos, with us having to pay monthly to keep our account open.

Any advice?

29 July 2023, 07:37 PM

dolmansaxlil

I have heard good things about Scan Cafe. Keep in mind that many of these services ship your photos overseas for the work to be done. Also be sure to ask for your originals back, if you want them.

When I had some to do I did it myself using a good flatbed scanner and I got excellent results. But it takes time and, if you want to do any colour correction, skill.

29 July 2023, 08:17 PM

ShiroKuro

quote:
What I do not want is the digitizing company to keep control of the photos, with us having to pay monthly to keep our account open.

Is that a thing??

I hate, hate, hate all the subscription stuff!

RE digitizing... maybe you could find a college student or something and a flatbed scanner, and pay them to do it? This might take more time at the beginning, but would prevent you from having to use a predatory company.

29 July 2023, 11:04 PM

Cindysphinx

Maybe I will just buy a scanner and feed photos in when I have time.

I don’t know anything about scanners, but I probably need a good one. There is an Epson for $600.

30 July 2023, 06:32 AM

jon-nyc

I did it with a scanner. It was easier than I thought since it could scan 4 at a time and automatically separate them into four different jpgs.

I looked into services but the problem wasn’t subscriptions, the problem was they didn’t keep your photos in order. It was easier for them to scan them based on size.

I find with many photos there is important contextual information lost if it’s isolated from others taken on the same trip or event.

For example, a photo of my mom and dad in a plaza means a lot more when I can tell from the other photos in the set that it was from their trip to Munich. By itself I’d be left wondering. Or a random picture of my mom wearing a dress. With the accompanying photos I can see it’s from cousin Judy’s wedding therefore I can put a date on it and an age on her. Without that context it would just be mom wearing a dress.

30 July 2023, 10:37 AM

Jack Frost

After much discussion, my sisters and I solved the problem by throwing away a lot of the color slides and Super 8 movies my dad left behind. It was made easier by asking ourselves , is this something our kids would want?

30 July 2023, 11:27 AM

CHAS

My late sister grabbed the old family photos. They are in Alaska. They are probably in a box in the chaos of her reading/computer room.
Would like to see some of those again, but the effort and potential conflicts are too much.

30 July 2023, 12:18 PM

wtg

I have a ton of photos of my own plus what I've inherited from several family members. It's hard to go through them, and it's even harder to throw them away. I went through a bunch of my uncle's photos and finally decided to pitch them. It felt like I was throwing a life away. Weird.

I'm the last one left standing, so at least the decision regarding what to do with these is mine alone. There's no one who will give a damn about these pics when I'm gone. I thought about digitizing, but at least for now have decided to put them all in a box labeled "Discard after I'm gone". Maybe I'll work up the courage to do it myself before I turn toes up....

Back to the original question...I'm not familiar with the digitizing services, so can't help you there.

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When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier

30 July 2023, 02:42 PM

Nina

Scanmyphotos.com will scan for about ten cents per photo if you want to outsource. They're also based on Irvine, CA if you don't want to deal with a non -US company.

We had a ton of family photos, but really only wanted to keep about a quarter of them. If you have the time to curate the photos in the first place, that's time well spent imo.

But Jon's point is a good one, too.

If you're looking for a scanner, CNET is a good place to get reviews. $600 seems a bit steep to me unless you're going to use it for other things as well.

30 July 2023, 03:38 PM

ShiroKuro

quote:
It felt like I was throwing a life away.

That’s kind of how I feel about it too. It’s oddly hard to throw away family photos, esp when you know there’s no digital version.

I don’t know what we’ll do, since we don’t have any kids of our own. That question is in the “think about later” pile.

31 July 2023, 07:20 AM

dolmansaxlil

quote:
Originally posted by Cindysphinx:
Maybe I will just buy a scanner and feed photos in when I have time.

I don’t know anything about scanners, but I probably need a good one. There is an Epson for $600.

I bought an Epson Perfection V370 based on reviews at the time and it did an excellent job. I assume there is be an updated version of it since that was a number of years ago.

ETA! please don’t throw away old photos. Look into donating to them to a place like this or a local archive. https://the-photo-vault.my.canva.site/

31 July 2023, 11:02 AM

ShiroKuro

quote:
please don’t throw away old photos. Look into donating to them to a place like this or a local archive.

I get the appeal of this, but I’m also not sure how I feel about making photos public when the people in them aren’t available to consent to that. I suppose it also makes how old the photos are and whether they contain anyone still living…

Is there any privacy drawback to domating the photos to an archive?

31 July 2023, 11:42 AM

wtg

I wondered the same thing.

Here's some discussion about donating family records:

https://www2.archivists.org/pu.../donating-familyrecs

A friend of mine who had a doctorate in medieval history and who was also an attorney started a blog where she posted photos of her family history. She posted photos of family and friends on her site but would not identify the individuals without their permission. She was kind of a stickler for doing things by the book, so I've assumed that her approach had some basis from both an archival and a legal perspective. It's been a while since she passed away, so I don't know if how she handled things is still valid today.

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When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier

31 July 2023, 12:22 PM

Mikhailoh

quote:
Originally posted by Jack Frost:
After much discussion, my sisters and I solved the problem by throwing away a lot of the color slides and Super 8 movies my dad left behind. It was made easier by asking ourselves , is this something our kids would want?

There you go. While it is heart-wrenching to discard them, are they really something you want to keep in perpetuity?