I have a good 10 years of photos stored in a box from the pre-digital camera era. I'm talking a LOT of photos. What is the best way to digitize these? Does anyone have experience with a particular photo scanner? Is there one with an auto feed so I don't have to 'touch' each one? My idea was to sort the pictures by year and scan in batches into individual directories. That's how I keep my digital images now and it seems to work well.
Thanks!
Do you have the negatives? I was able to take all of my negatives to a photo center, and have the pictures put onto photo discs, which live in a fireproof box with other sundries we wouldn't want to lose.
Been there done that.
My in laws celebrated their 50th anniversary a couple years ago and it was up to me to scan thousands (plural) to make the video. While I did all of theirs I also did mine and my family's as well.
Personally, I like having access to them on my computer since I use the photos for different things. I don't know how big my hard drive is or how much memory I have, but I have almost 23,000 pictures and I'm fine. So far, no one on either side of the family has shown an interest in having them. But I'm able to get to them, and download or send them by person/event or family in no time.
I have a Canon CanoScan 8800F. It does not have an automatic feeder, but once I got on a roll, it wasn't bad. I also have a Mac computer so iPhoto makes it really easy. I made 'albums' with 'folders' that make sense to me. Such as, I have an 'album' called Holidays. Within that album I have a folder for each holiday. My family album has a folder for each member of the family. If they are in the picture, it goes to their folder. So the same picture may be in more than one folder. Yes, it may be more work for some, but like I said, it makes sense to me. Our daughter is a senior in HS so I've been able to go to her 'folder' to find just the picture I need for a variety of different projects. By year, didn't work for my brain cells. Or at least not for everything. But if I go to my 'travel-vacation' album I can see my folder of our 2005 Japan. Or the 2007 Europe vacation.
All pictures are backed up to an external hard-drive. But I am now working on saving to USB flash drives for extra protection. God forbid, a tornado come trough, my computer, the external hard drive AND all my pictures are gone. Put on a flash drive and in a safe place, I'll feel better.
I have an HP Deskjet 3050A J611 series all in one wireless printer. It was cheap, lightweight(I take it to my Father's all the time to print and scan stuff), and has it's own flatbed scanner. HP recycles its empty cartridges, so it is also eco-friendly, and helps to keep costs down. It scans well with very few errors, and I can port them to any PC on my wireless network, so I can scan them in my Picture room, and send them to my Computer room.
You can make your own digital DVD's with slideshows set to music. I use this program, which is an initial investment, but soooooo worth it!
http://www.nticorp.com/en/us/product/media_maker_9.asp
I have also made family archive discs with each family member set to a song my Grandmother thought suited them, and a Christmas disc with various pictures of my son with friends and family set to music. It also makes memorable photo albums. Best part is it works in 99% of all DVD players and all PC's(Mac, Windows and Linux based), as I have tested them in a lot of machines.
There are no scanners within reasonable price that auto collate and auto feed pictures that I am aware of. If you scan them and put them in an archive book or UV binder right away, that will limit contact. The above scanner I have used with really old B&W photos, and green tinted Polaroids, and all with no damage to them.
Hope this helps.
Look for a document scanning/shredding/doc management/storage company in your area. It will take you forever to scan these yourself.
If color is not critical, you can have them scanned & batched for about .05 each--pricey overall but it won't be your life for a year!
Working on a similar project for work right now, I've looked at this from every angle!
Walmart has (had?) a machine that scans negatives and can make a CD of very high resolution digital images. I recommend uploading those to a sharing website like Shutterfly so the CD isn't the only copy. The only downside is that it can get expensive. You might want to check local small-scale camera shops to see if they will do it for cheaper.
Look for a scanner that will read multiple pictures at one time - but record them as individual pictures. I can put 6 pictures on my scanner and as long as there is space around each one, it records them as individual pictures. I have a Cannon M810 all-in-one. I started this same process and have scanned well over 1000 pictures so far. I try to store them by year and then month/event. I also have folders for myself and each of my siblings, etc for things that I don't know the date on. I store everything on an external hard drive and on a back up hard drive.
