Old photographs

[SumDay]

We're in full purge/downsizing mode, and I am going through a coffin sized Rubbermaid container full of photo albums I grabbed before the estate sale at my parents' home. It's been a few years, and I need to whittle this down.

These are the old black pages, with corner tabs, and she's written dates & names with white pencil. I've decided to pull out the pictures of family and people I know, and get rid of the books and mystery pictures because there are soooo many. I'm not moving them. This container is so heavy, the two of us can't pick it up, I slide it around.

I know my kids won't give a rat's rump about these, so I'm going to toss them in a photo box, and when I go to the nursing home, we'll pitch them then.

What do you do with old photos? Anyone done any digitizing? Or paid someone to digitize?

 

[Ian S]

I have done some digitizing and a lot depends on the flexibility of your scanner. I have an Epson V500 bought a few years ago that works quite well. It can be a bit time consuming as you want to ensure the photos (or slides/negatives) are free from dust. Some of the scanner software works quite well at correcting deteriorated colors or you can just use something like Photoshop. To get good results takes a bit of time and effort so it's probably best to cull the herd before you start.

 

[sengsational]

My parents are still around and have those old b&w photo albums, so I only have DW's and my pre-marriage photos (not many) then post-kids photos (a fair amount). I digitized all my slides, but still have the huge box of prints from the post kids era. I plan to digitize them at some point, either myself or sending them off.

"Culling the heard" is what has kept me from undertaking the project...I don't want to make the decisions and if I tried to do it with DW, it would become a trip down memory lane on every shot, so we'd never get through it.

 

[Bikerdude]

I just use a digital camera in micro mode. You may underestimate the younger generations interest in the family history.

 

[mpeirce]

I too have been scanning in old photos (and my in-laws and my ...) and while I have lots of free time, there are limits.

So I found these folks

Prepaid Photo Scanning Box - Starting at $99 per box

for bulk scanning. It's great for photos that I want to keep, but don't really need to carefully scan myself. They have a service that'll scan a prepaid postage box worth of photos for $99 (you can pay more for certain upgrades, but that's optional). I tried them out this past spring and the quality was pretty good. I was able to put 2090 photos in the box. The scans come back on a data DVD and they return the originals to you.

 

[athena53]

DH has endeared himself to my family and left a permanent legacy after he spent a couple of years going through Dad's slides, scanning and improving them in Photoshop. It's created so much joy, and I've put together some wonderful slideshows for landmark birthdays and anniversaries. My brother, the busy, hotshot tax accountant, called me as soon as he got one of the slideshows. He was the 5th and last kid and could never find any baby pictures. There were a ton of them- in the slides! He was thrilled. Of course we sent CDs to everyone. Media will change and CDs deteriorate- I know that- but at least they're in enough places they should be around for awhile.

 

[Jack_Pine]

I digitized all my parents old stuff and our stuff that was not digital already.

Our problem is no one knows what/who are in many of the parents pictures...............

 

[steelyman]

I digitized all my parents old stuff and our stuff that was not digital already.



Our problem is no one knows what/who are in many of the parents pictures...............

That's a problem. Real old photos were unearthed in my family from way back. You know... "The Old Country". Some had writing like "The girls at the beach".

What girls? What beach? Were they even with "us"?

 

[Jack_Pine]

That's a problem. Real old photos were unearthed in my family from way back. You know... "The Old Country". Some had writing like "The girls at the beach".

What girls? What beach?

Agreed. I still like to look at them. I like all the background stuff like buildings, cars and such as much as the people.

 

[Walt34]

I like all the background stuff like buildings, cars and such as much as the people.

A guy I worked with had the foresight to take a picture of himself every year with the current model police car. Wish I had thought of that. When he retired a few months after I did he showed us the collection of 30 photographs. Very neat!

 

[G8tr]

A guy I worked with had the foresight to take a picture of himself every year with the current model police car. Wish I had thought of that. When he retired a few months after I did he showed us the collection of 30 photographs. Very neat!

Hopefully he wasn't in the back seat.


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

 

[ERD50]

.... Media will change and CDs deteriorate- I know that- but at least they're in enough places they should be around for awhile.

Don't rely on the CDs. Keep the picture files backed up to several hard drives. Every few years, copy from those hard drives to another freshly formatted hard drive.

You just need to keep doing this and adjust as tech changes. But hard drives are so cheap and store so much, this really isn't that difficult.

-ERD50

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

I just use a digital camera in micro mode. You may underestimate the younger generations interest in the family history.

I agree. I ended up with alot of the family pictures because I was the only one who was interested. I wrote the names on the back of those I knew. I will look for someone to pass it onto as time goes on.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

That's a problem. Real old photos were unearthed in my family from way back. You know... "The Old Country". Some had writing like "The girls at the beach".

What girls? What beach? Were they even with "us"?

Well, when my Grandmother was alive I pumped her for information of what relatives were in the photos I was looking at. If it was not for her I would have thrown them away because I would not have known who they were. If you know who you are looking at in a photo you can begin to see where the looks in a family originate from.

 

[Bikerdude]

Well, when my Grandmother was alive I pumped her for information of what relatives were in the photos I was looking at. If it was not for her I would have thrown them away because I would not have known who they were. If you know who you are looking at in a photo you can begin to see where the looks in a family originate from.

I still can't believe I didn't ask my Grandparents those questions that they would have easily answered at the time. Now it has become a forensic endeavor.

 

[meierlde]

Well, when my Grandmother was alive I pumped her for information of what relatives were in the photos I was looking at. If it was not for her I would have thrown them away because I would not have known who they were. If you know who you are looking at in a photo you can begin to see where the looks in a family originate from.

Luckily we got my mother to ID her grandmothers before she passed. On the fathers side we had family pictures so could tell who was who (Grandparents you could ID and see which family they were associated with).

 

[Nemo2]

Hopefully he wasn't in the back seat.


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

 

[imoldernu]

From an older post:

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/uncurl-photos-75325.html#post1541182

Haven't had the courage to tackle this again.

 

[Car-Guy]

Some years ago, when went through about 30 years of pictures we had accumulated and tossed out what we really didn't want. After that we still had about 1500 pictures. The DW scanned (digitized) all of those and now we have them sorted and filed on a HD. (Actually two HD's, a primary and a backup). It took her several weeks, spending a couple hours a day, to get them all done in high quality. (They turned out really good.) It's odd, now that we have them all digitized, it seems we look through them less often than when they were hardcopy.

 

[Tom52]

We digitized our 40 years worth of photos a couple of years ago because we knew that we would eventually relocate after retirement. Now that Mom and Dad have passed we sorted thru all the old pictures and kept the ones that had meaning to us. Unfortunately, there were many pictures of people that could be family from generations ago, but if they did not have any notes on them they got pitched.


So, as soon as we get the parents pictures digitized we will have only a very few actual photos. If we need one we can easily print it out.


What we have in the house is a couple of these electronic picture frames that we can add whatever pictures we want to view. We run them as a random slide show and it really brings back many happy memories.

 

[donheff]

I digitized quite a few of my parents old photos and some of my pre-digital photos. Initially I used a scanner but later switched to a a digital camera which was quicker and easier with similar results. Photoshop is good for cleaning up those old photos. I was able to vastly improve the color balance on some of the faded color images from the 50s and 60s. I keep copies on my backup drive and online in Flickr albums.

 

[donheff]

What we have in the house is a couple of these electronic picture frames that we can add whatever pictures we want to view. We run them as a random slide show and it really brings back many happy memories.

My main desktop PC is on a desk in the kitchen across from a table where we often sit with company while preparing meals. I run a mix of travel and family photos on a screen saver there and inevitably get comments and interest. It is a good way to periodically see your photos. How often does anyone pull out a physical album?

 

[Major Tom]

My main desktop PC is on a desk in the kitchen across from a table where we often sit with company while preparing meals. I run a mix of travel and family photos on a screen saver there and inevitably get comments and interest. It is a good way to periodically see your photos. How often does anyone pull out a physical album?

I do the same thing, and the photos get seen a lot more than they would if they were sitting in an album. Quite often when I have company over, I notice my guest(s) looking over at the computer screen because the screensaver has activated, and they are viewing the photos. No need to purchase a separate digital picture frame!

 

[Sarah in SC]

Our apple tv has that slideshow feature and I use it a lot. All travel photos.

My mom took a whole bunch of old slides to Costco to get them digitized. It was expensive, but I appreciated the result--Dad used mostly slide film when we were kids, and it has been a long time since he hauled out the projector to show them on the one blank wall my mom let him have in the house!

 

[donheff]

Our apple tv has that slideshow feature and I use it a lot. All travel photos.

Hah, that feature surprised me. We use Apple TV at our weekend house and on vacations. I was surprised to see that a bunch of travel photos mysteriously appeared when the screen saver popped on. At first i couldn't figure out where they were coming from but then realized that DW has some sort of cloud sharing turned on photos on our iPad and those are downloading to the screen saver.