Scanning photos in bulk

theboyfold

theboyfold

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After spending an afternoon at my Dad's going through old photos, I thought it'd be nice to try and scan them in.

What's the best option for 'hands-free' scanning? By this I don't want to have to baby sit the solution, I also don't want to send them off.

Any thoughts? I've no idea on a budget at the moment either...
 
Are you scanning photos or negs?
If it's photos and they are small enough, you could scan a few at a time and crop them in PS, negs/slides can be done in a batch, depending on the scanner you have.

There really isn't a quick solution for either, but it should be a scan once, never again project.
 
Have a look for a minilab with a Kodak print scanner - I have a friend in Forfar, Scotland, with one - he scanned 1200 prints the other day for one customer - the scanner will work up to 600dpi - and 30 prints a minute!
 
My old Lexmark all in one's scanner function had a tray like a photocopier so it would scan through several sheets of it's own accord, I don't know how well it would have coped with photo prints though.

I don't think there's any negative scanning option that'll let you get away and do something else unless you pay someone else to do it for you.
 
Negative scanning + automatic feeding = £££

Print scanning + automatic feeding might be cheaper, but most automatic feeders were designed for high volume office document scanning, i.e. scanners which aren't the best for scanning your prints.

The two options are professionally (it is a one-off, after all) or buying a scanner yourself and doing it yourself manually (time intensive, but if you sell the scanner afterwards it'll probably be far more economical).
 
I use my Canon P-150 for these types of jobs, works well for me
 
Well - in a similar situation 18 months ago, I decided to make a start on the "big box of photo's" - I wanted to get a scan of them, and display them on a big screen, so my Dad could tell me exactly who was in the shot while he could still see well enough to id the people (he's gradually going blind :() In one afternoon, I managed to scan, crop, straighten and file 260 shots, which pretty much covered the B&W images where I didn't recognise anyone in the frame. This was on a Canon 8800F flatbed scanner - quite a fast scanner, but any half decent flatbed will cope with a couple of hundred images in an afternoon, I'd say. Of course, if you've a couple of thousand shots, then take David's advice ^^^ and get them to a minilab :)
 
Thanks for the replies all, it would seem that I have to pay a fair amount of money to get them done in bulk or wade through them myself!

It's a shame there is nothing out there that would do the job, I thought it would have been something interesting to the hire market at least.
 
theboyfold said:
Thanks for the replies all, it would seem that I have to pay a fair amount of money to get them done in bulk or wade through them myself!

It's a shame there is nothing out there that would do the job, I thought it would have been something interesting to the hire market at least.
Click to expand...

We still don't know what form your "old photos" take

*Most scan requests here are related to scanning film negatives, for that there are quite a few options depending on what form they take.

We don't get that many threads asking for help relating to scanning prints (if that's what you're looking for) because pretty much any flatbed is gonna do what most peeps want.

If you want any kind of quality surpassing web spec, you ought to scan the negs from which the prints were made.........goto *

:)
 
Most of the photos are in albums, so they have been separated from the prints. So I had initially thought that I'd like to scan all the prints, I had visions of a sheet feeder and me with my feet up.

We might have the negs, I will need to double check though.
 
prints would be one at a time pretty much, negs can be as many as 24 in one scan, there will be additional set up time though.
 
in all likelihood, your negs will be cut in to strips so it'll probably be flatbed
 
you'll have to fit the negs in to the holder....by hand...., the flatbed will scan them all with no other interference from you.
there are feeders for dedicated neg scanners for mounted slides and uncut roll film that scan 50 or so individually without supervision but nothing like that for consumer flatbeds.
 
theboyfold said:
What type of cables does the P-150 need? Any power of just a USB cable?
Click to expand...

Just USB, works with one or faster with two
 
What about a digital camera on a copy stand/suitable tripod?

It'd take a little bit of time to set up (even lighting and possibly set up some kind of register to place the photos against then set focus etc at the start and not have to worry about it again) but once your set up it'd go pretty quickly, a second or to to put the print in place, a fraction of a second for the exposure then a second or two to switch the print out for the next one as opposed to 30seconds + for each scan.

Someone on here did similar with negatives recently and the results were pretty good.
 
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