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Scan your own or use scanning service?

edmund

New member
What would you all do if you had say 1000 old prints?

Would you invest the time and effort into buying a scanner or would you use one of the many scanning services like Scandigital?

Ive used Scandigital for my negatives and had good results.

After visiting home this weekend, I was thinking of scanning all our old photo albums/photos in boxes. But I couldn't find a good photo scanner with an automatic feeder.

Any thoughts?
 

Cindy Flood

Super Moderator
Yikes. I actually love to scan film. I'm like a kid at Christmas when the image pops-up on screen. I have to say that looking at a box of 1000 prints to scan would be daunting. Maybe you should do some pruning first.
One of my relatives started just such a project about 8 years ago and never went anywhere with it. She had borrowed some of our family photos with this family-sharing project in mind, but finally gave them back to us recently.
I'd hire it to a service if I was dead-set on doing it. I personally enjoy looking at and holding the old originals, and scanning 1000 prints sounds like a PITA.
 

edmund

New member
I totally understand, as I loved to develop film back in the day.

My concern with even getting a scanner is that it would take so much time and also the post processing to get the dust off the print (and slide) scans.

scanmyphotos.com seems like they have too make parameters when sending photos. they have to be in bundles rubber banded together in the order you want them. seems like you cant even send them in a plastic bag!

anyway, i may just take advantage of the scandigital groupons....

getting those Hi-8 videos digitized is going to be another project!
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
I scan my new work when I shoot film ... a couple of rolls now and then, a pleasant evening spent running the scanner on an occasional basis is fun.

To do anything like a big project with hundreds if not thousands of exposures, however: no way. I simply do not have the patience or the time for that kind of thing. I would find the right scanning service and send all that work out.

I've used ScanCafe scancafe.com to do some scanning work. They did as good a job as I can for the most part and did it for a pittance compared to what my time to do the job would be.
 

DaveO

New member
I've scanned prints at Walmart on their machines. Some of the machines will actually take up to 4 prints at a time. You can then have them put onto a CD for about $ 3 or so. Prices are reasonable for prints off the prints ( about $ .29 each or so ) Don't remember how large the files are though. Somewhere around 2 MB or so I think.
 
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