Scanning Photos to digital

[Luvtoride]

I’ve found a new hobby in retirement. While going through storage boxes around the house, I have found thousands of photos (mostly 4x6 and smaller). I would like to scan the photos to digital and find a way to organize them.

I have used mail-in digital scan services in the past where you pack up a box of photos and they send you back a digital copy via a disk or a thumb drive. This method would be very expensive with the number of photos I have.

Is there a good DIY scanner that would allow me to feed in photos and produce decent digital images? Ideally, these would be stored directly to a cloud photo site like Google Photos or iCloud Photos.

Any suggestions for a solution would be appreciated.

Brian

 

[COcheesehead]

Take a picture with your cell phone, crop, store.

 

[Time2]

15 years ago, I sent all the film my mother took of us kids 55 to 65 years ago to had them converted to digital media. Haven't looked at them since.

 

[MC Rider]

I would not recommend the old HP multi perpetrator machine we have. Makes good scans, but takes too long. It is over a decade old so they must have better stuff now. With s feeder for your input photos.

 

[easysurfer]

I believe Epson and Canon have photo scanners that you feed a deck of photos and then the photos scan away. I haven't used as haven't taken on such a project with all the photos but if I did, would invest in these type of machines and no way would I use something like a flatbed scanner for that many pictures.

 

[Luvtoride]

I believe Epson and Canon have photo scanners that you feed a deck of photos and then the photos scan away. I haven't used as haven't taken on such a project with all the photos but if I did, would invest in these type of machines and no way would I use something like a flatbed scanner for that many pictures.

Thanks, or a cellphone camera like CoCheesehad suggested? Lol.
I’ll check out Epson and Canon.

 

[Ronstar]

I’ve done the cell phone method with surprising resolution.

 

[Birdie Num Nums]

I’ve done the cell phone method with surprising resolution.

And it doesn't need to be one photo at a time. You could group two or more related photos side by side and/or as a gang of four or more, etc. -- then take a cell photo of that.

 

[jollystomper]

I have tried printer scanners and cell phone to digitize photos. My cell phone results are much better.

What I need to get, though, is a stand/tripod to mount the cellphone to and take the pictures to make the effort easier and more consistent.

 

[savory]

I did a scanning project many years ago using a scanner at home. As I recall, the key issues were having a template to organize multiple photos on the scanner so one scan captures many pictures. Then to easily be able to separate the scanned pics so they can be placed in the digital album you will likely create. I found organizing the photos post scanning was easier than pre-scanning.

As a tool, I would evaluate the phone vs the scanner for efficiently and quality. I started with a regular copy machine that was cumbersome since I could not separate multiple photos. Then to the scanner that worked well. The phone was not on my radar or not advanced enough to use at that time.

It was time consuming. But worth the financial or time investment as sharing them with family is so easy.

 

[donheff]

Take a picture with your cell phone, crop, store.

+1 90% of the stuff isn't worth keeping. For those that are, a cell phone provides good copies. Minor adjustments with levels (including picking a neutral gray with the dropper) can bring faded old color snapshots to life.

 

[Ronstar]

I’ve done the cell phone method with surprising resolution.

And it doesn't need to be one photo at a time. You could group two or more related photos side by side and/or as a gang of four or more, etc. -- then take a cell photo of that.

Great idea! That would cut down the amount of time needed to take all of the photos. And later if you wanted just one of the pics in a group, just crop it and make a single photo.

A couple other ideas.

1. Get a tripod mount for the cell phone. Take the pics with the photos temporarily mounted on a wall to minimize shadows and glare from interior lighting.

2. Get a remote shutter

 

[sengsational]

If you want to curate during the process, then a cell phone shot for the few that warrant saving might work. I would never take that approach because the perspective can shift, and I'm more of a perfectionist.

I bought an Epson FF-640, which is one where you drop in a stack of photos, and it scans both sides (unless one side is blank) and takes a couple of seconds per stack. More here: https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/digitizing-old-photos-100032.html#post2302468


In my case, I didn't want to cull during the scan project because then the process would involve discussion, and productivity would drop a few orders of magnitude

 

[Aerides]

Great idea! That would cut down the amount of time needed to take all of the photos. And later if you wanted just one of the pics in a group, just crop it and make a single photo.

A couple other ideas.

1. Get a tripod mount for the cell phone. Take the pics with the photos temporarily mounted on a wall to minimize shadows and glare from interior lighting.

2. Get a remote shutter

Another idea would be a small lightbox. These often come with a good setup to use with a phone, and allow for overhead shots. You lie the photo flat on the bottom and take the picture from the top of the box.

You'll get great crisp lighting, no glares or shadows, and a steady place to light your phone flat above the shot. Avoid unintended angles or ambient lighting impacting the original picture.

Something like this one: https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Portable-Foldable-Photo-Studio/dp/B01GIL6EU4 The pics show folks using it from the front, but there's a hole at the top to use too for overhead shots for flat things.

Any decent one will have a lot of videos to show you good setups.

 

[DrRoy]

Search reviews of scanners to find one you like.

 

[OldShooter]

... decent digital images ...

You'll have to define this more carefully as it will drive your decision. We have a couple of high quality flat bed scanners but high resolution scans are slow. On the other end of the spectrum, a cell phone photo of a group of prints is going to give you pretty junky images. Remember, too, that you'll have to spend time on each print cleaning and removing dust and lint. This is difficult and doesn't keep the Dust Fairy from coming as soon as you're ready to scan.

Personally, I would cull the photos a bit, then send them off to a commercial scanning service. Quality and turnaround will be far better than DIY. Split the shipments into several packages, sent on different days, to minimize the pain if one gets lost. (I once sent a package of about 900 Ektachrome images to the best lab in town; they all got processed on the day their E-4 machine was sick and almost all came back with a strong magenta tint. Too many eggs in one basket.)

 

[rk911]

I scanned most all of our old photos using our multi-function printer.

 

[Car-Guy]

We scanned all of ours on a high resolution scanner years ago. The DW did it over a week or so working on it a few hours at a time. Nice project for her that also helped her learn how to sort and file things on a computer.

 

[Morgan22]

I culled all of our photos over 5 years ago. I had about 100 left over that I wanted to keep. I then used me brother multi-function printer to scan in each photo. I believe it took me a couple weeks.
I used to watch a lot more tv back then, so every time there was a commercial during one of my shows, I would scan in a few photos.
The quality of the photos came out great. After all photos were scanned, I got rid of the physical ones.

 

[Palmtree]

Epson makes great inexpensive scanners. You can scan prints, slides or negatives. Most come with great software that can automaticlly adjust color, contrast, etc.