Scanning old family photos for archiving...suggestions?

[Handruin]

I'm searching for a scanner to archive family photos of 4x6s and Polaroids sitting in old family albums to archive them. Have any of you guys done this type of project?

Does it matter to go beyond 300 DPI for this type of project when the source images are not really high end photos? They are just basic family pictures throughout the years that I'd like to digitize and preserve before they fade away.

I read suggestions for a middle grade Epson V100 which can be found for under $100US. If I wanted higher end, I read something like a Epson V500 which seems to have a very high DPI capabilities of 6400 for under $200US.

I want a good quality scan but at the same time having speed would also be nice because I'll have a lot of photos to scan. A nice feature I would like is if I could put multiple photos in the scanner at one time and have them auto crop them into individual files. If anyone else has undergone this type of project, what scanner did you use and what quality and archiving resolutions and file formats did you decided to go with? If you had to do this again, would you do it the same way?

 

[LunarMist]

I scanned old prints a couple of years ago. I started using some Epson that was one of the better flatbed scanners at the time, but I was not pleased with the tonal scale in the dark areas. (I think they compromised too much on making it a transparency scanner as well.) The new models are probably better. I ended up getting a second scanner - Canon 8800F, which was pretty decent.

600 DPI is reasonable if the prints are small, so that there is extra info for PP. I don't know of any automatic parsing of image areas to separate files. Generally you will want to have the scanner save the files as TIFFs for future use. You can process them to other formats later is PS, etc. PNG is good for saving space, but jpegs may be enough for your needs.

 

[Bozo]

I scanned some photos in using a HP Deskjet F4135. It did a great job on all the pictures as they were only of family and what not. It has a 'Photo' scan option too.

$49.00 at Walmart.

 

[Handruin]

I decided to get the Epson V500 for $160 shipped for free (newegg gave me a $10 off which I applied). My girlfriend has some medium format work she also wants to scan and this should be able to do that. I'll give feedback on the scanner once I get it and start processing family photos.

My plan is to scan them all in and then do an audio interview with my parents to capture their memories of the photos to pass along some day. I'll create some type of DVD with music and their audio to coincide with the family photos. I'll probably buy the Zoom H4N I mentioned in another thread because I want that gadget for a different project anyway and would work perfect for this project (even though it's overkill).

 

[Stereodude]

My suggestion is don't scan prints. Scan negatives.

 

[Handruin]

If I have them, I will do the negatives (the V500 does those also). I'm guessing a lot of the photos in my parents photo albums are probably 4x6 prints. I agree, the source is more ideal if I can find them.

 

[Stereodude]

I'm not sure on the V500 if scanning a negative will give you better results than scanning a print. However, if you had access to a good dedicated 35mm film scanner I would expect that to beat scanning a print.

 

[Handruin]

If I knew I had all the 35mm negatives, I would have gone the route you went in your earlier thread using a film scanner. I'm pretty sure most of the photos are just hanging around in photo books without the original source. Because of that, I want to scan them before the fade over the years. Some of the photos are probably 30+ years old.

If I can find some 35mm negatives, I'll try to scan that and the print to see which comes out better. If there is no difference, I'll just go with the print. Do you know if the print would fade faster than the negative? I'm assuming it would...and I'm sure it all depends on the quality of the print which was likely something like CVS.

 

[Stereodude]

I would expect the negatives to be more stable than the prints, but as always, YMMV.