Photo Scanning Services

Snark

Checking the possible viability of a bulk photo scanning service (post your photos, pay via paypal) then receive back CD/DVD/Thumbnail book.

Apart from the obvious (people not keen to part with their precious photos) any comments ?

As a measure, between €3.50-€5 for individual photo is the cost per scan, if you walk into a photography shop at present.

magicbastarder

how many are you looking at? what format?
would you be able to afford a scanner of your own?

elven

Well, you either get your negs/slides scanned when you get them developed, or you accumulate some favourites over the weeks/months/years and get them scanned once you've collected them together. I think there's far more of the former than the latter kind of customers, and if you are going to try and get the ones that want the scans made long after development, you have to consider a few things... dust removal? resolution? supported formats?

As you say about parting iwth our pictures - I know I would be far less inclined to post my slides away than to drop them off in a shop, even if it is much more expensive...

Alun

I also think that after you've done a few hundred of these you'd begin to realise why the current places charge what they do. It's fun to do one or two, but pretty mind-numbing to do it day-in day out.

311

Is there such a thing as a good quality self feeding scanner?
Stick in 200 photos and the scanner does the rest ?

Snark

Doing a few dozen photos yourself is fine. It's when you want to do a few hundred that the repetiveness sinks in.

the downside is definitely packaging up precious memories - how could this be dealt with ?

elven

Are you talking about prints, negs or slides?

Snark

Elven,

prints initially. I am thinking of the shoebox full of old photographs, and there is only 1 copy of them. How can I share these with my family? Would readers here like to get a gift token from a friend allowing them to do this.

By old - I mean pre digital camera proliferation. For the vast majority of people out there - pre-digital is late 1990's...

311

Sorry ,excuse me

elven

Snark wrote:

Elven,

prints initially. I am thinking of the shoebox full of old photographs, and there is only 1 copy of them. How can I share these with my family? Would readers here like to get a gift token from a friend allowing them to do this.

By old - I mean pre digital camera proliferation. For the vast majority of people out there - pre-digital is late 1990's...

That bit of information would have been helpful in the original post... saying 'photos' could mean prints, negs or slides!

magicbastarder

you could buy a perfectly servicable flatbed scanner for the cost of 40 scans, at the price you mention above.

brian - i know some of the nikon 35mm film scanners come with optional automatic feeders. they're not cheap though, you'd be looking at the guts of a grand, if not more, for the scanner and feeder.

311

magicbastarder wrote:

brian - i know some of the nikon 35mm film scanners come with optional automatic feeders. they're not cheap though, you'd be looking at the guts of a grand, if not more, for the scanner and feeder.

I was thinking along the lines of a print/4x6 feeder ,the negative feeder would be great ,but theres loads of B&W's from the 30's & 40's that I don't have the time to scan.

Thanks.

magicbastarder

i've seen something similar, but more for documents than photos.

Ideo

yeah i use to deal with one of these in a summer job i had. would feed the pages to be scanned like a fax machine and it would just churn them out. quality wasn't great mind you but i would imagine a photo specific scanner would be much more specific, and better! incidentally, i bought a canon flatbed scanner last xmas for €110 which has a little negative adapter where you can stick in a negative slide and it will automatically copy all four into individual files, really handy but quality isn't the greatest tho