i recall a thread where this was discussed, but searching "scanner" didn't give me any newer threads, so i'm making another one

i'd like to go through both my and my wife's families' photos and scan them all (setting aside a weekend for each) and so i'd like something that i can just feed into the scanner (rather than a flatbed) and as such, something that is fairly portable

that said, value (scanning quality for the price) is more important than portability, so i suppose i'm looking for anything $200 or less...it'd be great if i could make the process fairly automated by just feeding it photos and having software automatically name them as they come in so that i can take notes in order and go back to tag them later...most of the pictures are 4x6-ish, but bonus points for something that can handle anything larger

[Edited on July 4, 2011 at 12:55 PM. Reason : 1200dpi or higher? i don't know, maybe 600dpi is good?]

7/4/2011 12:50:49 PM

get the new neat receipts pack from neatco. the software is pretty useful for business trips and it has an ADF (auto document feeder)

7/4/2011 2:54:17 PM

In my opinion you either want to bite it and buy a nice scanner or just ship them off and have a company scan them for you. Photo scanners that are worth a flip are high maintenance - just not worth it for someone not doing a TON of photos.

At work we do maybe 2500 photos a week and this is the best one I've ever used:
http://www.amazon.com/Kodak-Picture-Sheet-Fed-Scanning-1992882/dp/B0042KFLHQ/ref=sr_1_29?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1309807099&sr=1-29

And for quick stuff we have like 3 of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-fi-6130-Duplex-Scanner-PA03540-B055/dp/B0018KYELC/ref=sr_1_65?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1309807113&sr=1-65

And the ^ replaces it's little brother:
http://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-ScanSnap-Instant-Sheet-Fed-Scanner/dp/B001V9LQH0/ref=pd_cp_e_1

For just family photos the scansnap should get it done quite nicely. But if it was me I'd have walgreens ship that stuff off and bill me. They'll have it back in a few days and you'll have a DVD with all your photos that you'll promptly backup somewhere. Scansnap also folds up into a little cube for transportation.

7/4/2011 3:23:48 PM

i can vouch for scansnap. i own one (bought on ebay) and took my office totally digital. it scans everything from tiny receipts to legal sized documents. over several weeks i scanned everything from furniture receipts and home closing documents to medical records and magazine articles i wanted to keep. i was able to clear out my whole filing cabinet cluster fuck and can now instantly search any document i own on my computer using keywords (based on how i named each file)

i scanned all my family photos on it as well. it worked great because you can change the settings to tell it you're scanning photos so it will save each one as a separate file while feeding through endless amounts

i would say though, that you have to kind of keep an eye on the photos going through. sometimes 2 will go through at once and you have to re-feed the one that was pulled in and not scanned. also, it doesn't hold a shit-ton of photos or paper because it's portable so you kind of have to feed stuff in in small batches. i found that it worked really quickly so i could watch tv and just keep an eye on the tray and throw more in when it was getting low.

i scanned about 750 photos in about 4 hours. there was some stopping involved for file naming & dragging as i had already pre-sorted my photos by year so i could stop at the end of a particular year and drag all the photos into a folder before starting a new year. if you organize by year (or care to) i would suggest writing the year on the back of the photos with a ball point pen or sharpie so they stay organized in case they get mixed up. also helps down the line if you ever lose the digital files.

[Edited on July 5, 2011 at 9:51 AM. Reason : moar]

7/5/2011 9:50:05 AM

is 600dpi good enough for printing enlargements? i'm looking to archive these photos...i don't want to look back and wish i had done something better

looking at some of the ship-them-off options, the majority do 150-300dpi, but offer ridiculous 9600dpi+ for negatives and such...

7/5/2011 9:55:27 AM

are you planning on trashing all the originals?

i would consider organizing the original photos in some way that makes sense to you, so you can find specific imagines when you want. use a low-cost option to scan them all in. that will serve the purpose of sharing them, enjoying them, slide show, etc.

and if you ever need to enlarge one or do something fancy with it, you can pull out the original and spend the money to have it scanned & enlarged to it's potential, instead of spending however much to have them all scanned in it some high resolution you may never use.

7/5/2011 11:00:34 AM

PRINTS are horrible resolution. You have to scan them at a decent resolution just to have any hope of reproducing something sharp. Also, you really can not make a larger print than what the original is without just having it be pure crap. Negatives need to be scanned at incredibly high resolution so you can make the large prints. You'll get the "best" results out of a good flatbed scanner.

7/5/2011 11:08:20 AM

I think the 300dpi scans from walgreens/ship out company are more than worth it. You're not getting the 600dpi you can get at home fairly easily, and you're not getting the 1600dpi you'd get from the flatbed. As your effort increases, so does the end product quality.

I scanned all the family photos to have an archive; not to have a repository to print 8x10's from. We have everything safely backed up and mirrored to another location. So if a fire consumed all the originals the family history is not lost. Let's be honest - in a few years everything is going to be on a screen anyway. A lowly 72dpi is going to look good from across the room flipping through images on family main viewing screen (can you really call it a TV?).

7/5/2011 1:09:56 PM

well, these are mostly old (in many cases, 70+ years) photos, so negatives are out of the question...it's not so much that i'm trying to take an old square photo and turn it into a poster, just want to be able to archive all of the pictures with enough quality that i could print ROUGHLY the original size without making it look like crap

for example, there's a 5x5" black and white picture that my grandmother has that i'd like to scan, crop/enlarge to 4x6", and print it out...granted, black and white and the general quality of the photo makes that pretty easy, but that doesn't mean i want to make it any worse than it already is

7/5/2011 1:11:35 PM

why not send off a pack of 50 pictures and home scan the same 50 and see if it's worth it. You'll be out like $10 and 30 minutes. If it's not worth it return the scanner to amazon.

7/5/2011 3:49:58 PM

I know DH Hill library has a slide scanner with auto feed that I have used a few times. You might want to check if they have a photo scanner as well. The slide scanners they have are Nikons and work reasonably well.

7/7/2011 8:09:46 AM

new orleans deal today on groupon is for photo scanning. it's through a website so it doesn't matter where you live

hopefully this link works:

http://www.groupon.com/deals/scanmyphotos-new-orleans?c=image&utm_content=all-deals_new-orleans&date=20110716&division=new-orleans&p=5&s=body&sid=10927797&utm_campaign=scanmyphotos-new-orleans&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&user=d07c8d0e4f59535f99e19b8ed79def96ff7b1122cc398efb68683519475e7555

$29 for 1,000 4"x6" Photos Converted to DVD with Return Shipping Included from ScanMyPhotos.com


i would totally jump on this if i hadn't already scanned in my 700+ photos a few months ago

7/16/2011 10:12:19 AM

Quote :

"I know DH Hill library has a slide scanner with auto feed that I have used a few times. You might want to check if they have a photo scanner as well."

The Craft Center has a negative scanner.

[Edited on July 16, 2011 at 10:38 AM. Reason : (at least they did about 1.5-2 years ago)]

7/16/2011 10:38:34 AM

2 years later and i still haven't gotten around to doing this

i've decided i'd rather just get a good flatbed scanner, as a lot of these really old photos might not handle going through a feeder very well, so now it's just about picking a unit

how important is DPI past, say, 2400 (for the purpose of archiving old photos that might be lost, thrown away, or otherwise never seen again)? thoughts on these (is one clearly better or they're all pretty much the same)?

Canon CanoScan LiDE110 4507B002 ($49, 2400x4800 DPI)
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-CanoScan-4507B002-LiDE110-Scanner/dp/B003VQR1UC/

Epson Perfection V37 B11B207201 ($77, 4800x9600 DPI)
http://www.amazon.com/Epson-B11B207201-Perfection-Color-Scanner/dp/B009KBLYDM/

Canon CanoScan LiDE210 4508B002 ($80, 4800x4800 DPI)
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-4508B002-CanoScan-LiDE210-Scanner/dp/B003VQR1TS/

Canon CanoScan LiDE700F 3297B002 ($91, 9600x9600 DPI, does film negatives as well)
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-CanoScan-3297B002-Color-Scanner/dp/B001R4BTI0/

Canon CanoScan 5600F ($99, 4800x9600 DPI, does film negatives and slides as well)
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-CS5600F-Color-Scanner-2925B002/dp/B001DLVERS/

10/18/2013 1:33:57 PM