Service to digitise old photos

colm_c

Thinking about digitising some old family photos and considering doing it myself or using a service to digitise them for me.

Has anyone used one of these services?

Boots are offering it:
http://www.boots.ie/en/Photo/Photo-Printing/Photo-Scanning-Service/

65 for 200 photos -- cheaper than me having to fork out for a decent scanner, plus the time it would take!

Anyone know of any other services (based in Dublin)? first hand experience is invaluable.

ED E

Few routes:

Flatbed - Too slow, forget it
Feeder - Cheap ones: (€80) produce very lacklustre results
_____ - Expensive ones: Expensive. An ix500 would give ok results at €400
DSLR Method - Very labour intensive, pretty good results with practice. Only consider if you have use of an area + lights for a fixed setup
Googles new app - Doesnt Work, forget it.
Professional services - Tend to be expensive but probaby worth the outlay.


I've a mix of negatives and prints to digitize. At least 1500 to start with. Still not decided what I'll do. Then theres the Super8....

Adrian.Sadlier

It all depends on at least five things:

1) The quality of the scans - I've never tried it so I can't comment on the quality or resolution you will get. It might be worthwhile to do a "test" scan of a few images. They might do a "tester" for you if you explain how many you eventually want done.

2) The quality of the original photos. If they are poor quality to start with then you will be more tolerant of the scan quality.

3) How much you value your time. To scan them yourself is a slow, tedious process but it does allow you to "enhance" those special photos that are really important to you.

4) The number of prints you want to scan

5) Your budget

Personally, I went with the self scanned method. I had thousands of photos to scan and I started long before commercial services were commonly available at reasonable prices. I always bought a good scanner and have burnt out 3 of them over 10 years. I now have an Epson V750 scanner (which was not cheap) but is/was probably the best flatbed scanner around for scanning negatives which is what I use it for now. That and the odd document.

If they are mainly home snapshots of personally valued rather than artistic shots I would be tempted to use a DSLR and set up a tripod rig, with lighting, focus etc. set up manually and have at it. Once you get the setup right you can go at it with a vengeance, getting through hundreds of photos in a few hours. If you do that, shoot in RAW and Jpeg at the same time. For most of the shots jpeg will be fine but for the few you want to enhance later having RAW files will be an advantage.

Happy Christmas

Adrian

beauf

Whats an affordable scanner for photos and negs if you were mad enough to do it.

Adrian.Sadlier

I honestly don't know. But the Epson V750 was about €700.

beauf

I think our understanding of the word affordable might differ slightly.

magicbastarder

The v750 is that price because of its transparency handling capabilities. There's no suggestion yet that the OP needs that.

colm_c

I'm leaning towards the professional services, even to just save my time, but will need to do a sample run to see.

Most photos will be from 80's/90's/00's all consumer grade camera's and standard (for the time) size prints -- I'm not expecting amazing hi definition results, but still want to preserve them.

I'm happy to enhance/adjust/tag them in lightroom when they are all digitised, at least that bit is kinda fun and can be somewhat automated.

No idea yet on volume, will find out when I will get to my parents house at christmas.

It's a project for next year I reckon, but will start collecting over christmas.

magicbastarder

do you know anyone you could borrow a scanner from? if they're 6x4s, you should be able to scan them three at a time.

Bang Bang

I can highly recommend Darkroom Service, based in Barrow Street Dublin. I have used their service numerous times and cannot fault the friendly professional service and top quality scans and prints.

http://www.darkroomservice.ie

Cameraman

I've been thinking of getting the Epson V550 (GB£180 on Amazon) which gets good reviews. Not as good obviously as the V750, but good enough for me, I think.

Planning to use it for scanning old photos, negs and slides - but just for general use - so don't expect absolutely pro-quality.

akeaveney

Hi Colm,

If you are considering taking on this project yourself I recommend checking out this website:

http://www.scanyourentirelife.com/

I have a Epson V500 and have used it to scan about 200 slides.

Take care,

Alan.

TomCo

I spent a very VERY long time researching affordable dedicated 35mm scanners on the second hand market.

In order of preference I'd look for -
Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 II
Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400
Canon Canoscan FS4000 US

I own the canoscan, I think it cost me just under 200 on ebay. Its slooooow but the 4000dpi scans are great.