Convert old photos to Digital.

dotsman

Hey, not sure if this is the best place for the thread, so please move move it if you can think of a more suitable place.

I have a good few (approx 100) old photos that I would like to get converted to a digital format (to display in a digital photo frame and on the net to share with friends). Unfortunately, I do not have the negatives. I've no idea how to go about doing this and have a few questions I hope someone can answer.

1. Is there any place that does this (I'm based in Dublin city)?
2. Is the process cheap (ie should I only convert the ones I really like as opposed to the whole lot)?
3. Is the quality great/perfect?
4. Is there anything in particular I need to consider when choosing a place?

I've googled a bit, but all I'm finding is web pages on doing it at home via a scanner. But, other than this conversion, I would have no use for a scanner, and as I want the quality to be great, I'd probably need an expensive scanner!

mike65

I would have thought a stationary service would have the equipment for that sort of job.

Mike.

stcstc

well scanning would be the best way, I can do that but it would add up to a whole bunch of money,its quite time consuming


another option would be to use a digital camera and photograph them

AnCatDubh

You may be interested in this thread. Costs as clarified in the post are in the bargain basement end of things and would be about €3 per print. Can't vouch for quality at such a store.

Think the scanning may be the best way to go. If you have no use for your scanner (and after doing 100 of them you'll probably never want to see another scanner), you could always pop it on adverts.ie or eBay to be rid of it. As i indicated in the linked post for about €80 you can get a multifunction device which will give quite respectable results. It won't be professional grade or anything but in my experience it has been fine for personal enjoyment.

The economics of it are probably easy enough:
€300 to get someone else to look after it for you (bargain basement) or
€80 for a device + your time - selling price after the event maybe (€40) = €40 total (maybe) should you do it yourself.

Cheers.

dotsman

Cheers for all your input.

Wow, didn't realise it would cost that much to get them done in a shop! (kinda hoped they would have some photocopier-type machine that would automatically feed a load of photos and put them on a CD for 40-50 quid).

So, a scanner it is! If it all works out well, I might try and convince some friends to do it with their old photos and get most of the cost of the scanner back! I would imagine most people have a collection of photos from pre-digital-camera days that are just collecting dust somewhere.

I had a look on Komplett and like this guy (a lot of favourable reviews on Amazon). Can anyone see a reason not go with this scanner?

As for the 300 dpi you are recommending, this scanner is quoting 4800 dpi x 9600 dpi (and all the other ones seem to be this high as well). Are these figures correct or are they referring to some other aspect of the scanner?

AnCatDubh

Hmnnnn....., can't say i know about the one you mention above but on the dpi thing. The dots per inch (dpi) at which you can expect reasonable photographic quality from is commonly regarded as requiring 300dpi hence if you scan a 6x4 at 300dpi then you can expect to reproduce the 6x4 at practical identical quality (from the perspective of the actual dots that will ultimately make up the image) - other issues that will effect it is colour/saturation/brightness/contrast/etc... a bit of trial and error will sort you here. I've also seen dpi's quoted to reproduce photographic quality of 200dpi and 340dpi.

The HP one i used has a scanning spec as follows;

Optical Resolution 1200 x 2400 dpi
Interpolated Resolution 19200 x 19200 dpi
Gray Scale Depth 8 bit
Color Depth 48 bit

The canon has;

Optical Resolution 4800 dpi x 9600 dpi
Interpolated Resolution 19200 dpi x 19200 dpi
Grayscale Depth 16-bit (64K grey levels)
Colour Depth 48-bit colour

So in theory the canon has a better capacity to scan at higher resolutions than my hp. Reading a cnet review of my HP it says its fairly cr*p at scanning - having said that i've produced quite acceptable results with it. So I reckon in resolution terms you've nothing to worry about.

Having said all of that, i've no experience of the canon - if someone has experience, they'd better advise. You could try for online reviews too.

Cheers.

stcstc

there are other kinds of subtle issues to be aware of too

its a bit like buy a lens for your camera, two lenses with same focal length can be miles apart in terms of quality

also the actual software used can make a huge difference too

I use silverfast AI which is rgaurded as one of the best in the mid range market

and the difference between scans from it and the epson software with my v750 pro is quite large.

DonkeyStyle \o/

stcstc wrote: »

I use silverfast AI which is rgaurded as one of the best in the mid range market and the difference between scans from it and the epson software with my v750 pro is quite large.

Hmm, really? ó_O
I got some version of silverfast (might be 'SE' or something) with my epson perfection 4990, but I've been using the regular epson scan utility.
Although I'm already 3,500+ scanned images in... it's probably a bit late to start thinking about silverfast
I might give it another look though... wasn't there something about it being able to detect (or that you could specify) which type of film was used?
I'd be interested in any comments you have as to how/why it's better.

stcstc

it has a much steeper learning curve than epson scan, but you can produce far superior results with it than you can with epson scan

the se version is quite cut back and does not hve stuff like the IT-8 calibration i dont think, but still you could be surprised with a little learning how much nice the scans will be