Digitizing old photographs

[Saab2000]

I am sitting on a lot of old photographs that I'd like to digitize. Suggestions? Scanner from an office store?

[monadnocky]

My HP all in one (an 8620) seems to do a decent enough job with a bunch of old photographs that I had. A little laborious but to be honest I couldn't have been happier at the result.

okay so here's the proof. Embarrassing. One of my first races. I think I was 15. I got fourth. Echelon_John won, actually. I still resent him for it.
It's Plymouth, for those wondering. I won't tell you which one of these citizen clowns I am.

plymouth.jpg

[Saab2000]

White V1 Pro? Or Black V1 Pro?

[monadnocky]

White V1 Pro? Or Black V1 Pro?

Errr. At least they were better than the hockey helmet that Mr. Porn Stache is wearing back there.

Pink saddle cover + pink bar tape + tube socks = complete awesomeness
hey, I had a girlfriend to impress.

[bking]

i did this with every photo we have, some 8,000 of them from the past 34 years of marriage and kids. paid my daughter one summer to pull, number and send them to a service that would scan then upload them to our smugmug site. They sent them back and she put them back into the albums or boxes they were in. Now every photo is available on the net. my kids love it, it's been good for different family projects.

[benkiel]

There are services that will do the scanning for you at a somewhat reasonable price. I've used scancafe.com in the past, it's good; though you have to trust sending off your photos to them (either in the US or India). This is good if you want decent digital copies of things and have a lot of photos. If you scan yourself, you face the problem of inertia, going for a ride is way more appealing than scanning a photo, and you'll sink a lot of time into this if you don't have a batch scanner. If you care about the absolute best quality, then you'll pay a lot more than Scan Cafe, but you can find a local or US based photo processing shop that'll make really good scans. Save that for things you really care about, Scan Cafe the rest.

[Markco]

Fujitsu ScanSnap. Bonus is you can go paperless on your personal finance/monthly bills. Just remember to develop a back up strategy. Been paperless since 2009 and very happy about it. You can cue up a dozen or so photos at a time and grind away at it.

[false_aesthetic]

I'm happy to talk to you over email about this. I teach this stuff and do this for a living.
If you're scanning prints you're at a significant disadvantage. It would be better to scan negatives if you have them.
It's really easy to do this wrong and waste your time. Not that hard to do it right --- just time/labor intensive.

FWIW, I get requests to train people about 6x a year. Most of the time people get about 1 hour in and then ask, "Can I just hire you?"

[Saab2000]

I'm happy to talk to you over email about this. I teach this stuff and do this for a living.
If you're scanning prints you're at a significant disadvantage. It would be better to scan negatives if you have them.
It's really easy to do this wrong and waste your time. Not that hard to do it right --- just time/labor intensive.

FWIW, I get requests to train people about 6x a year. Most of the time people get about 1 hour in and then ask, "Can I just hire you?"

PM me your e-mail. The photos in question are art pics or anything like that. Just plain old snapshots from the days of film. Remember film?

[randonneur]

There are services that will do the scanning for you at a somewhat reasonable price.

^^ this. so many times, this. If your time is at all valuable to you. $.50 /photo should be plenty for most spots. Hand scanning yourself will be roughly 3-5mins/ photo with cleaning + setup + scanner. You can work out the economies for yourself.

I had a pile of negs, prints and slides I wanted to scan. I sat on them for years and finally just sent them out. So worth it. I don't even remember who i used, but this list here is probably a good starting point for picking a provider.