Photo Scanner? Must convert 10,000 prints into JPG

[mhafweet]

Hey guys!

My dear mother of 10 took impressive amounts of photos of us as children, and for the last decade she's been storing them in three big cardboard boxes in her closet. For Christmas, we want to take these old photos of hers and convert them to JPG so the whole family can have access to them. SO we're looking at buying a photo scanner, and we can afford something up to about $300. We have to scan from prints because the negatives have deteriorated too much.

Does anyone have suggestions for a photo scanner? We need something:

- Fast (just think of those 10,000+ prints... XD)
- Decent quality. These aren't for a gallery, but the memories are important to us.
- Decent resolution. Some of the scanners offer 1.5 MP resolution... which is just dumb. Give me at least 3MP.
- Ability to control white lines caused by dust and static.

We would VERY much prefer the kind where you can slide the prints through (opposed to a flat-bed scanner), because they convert the photos to JPG and crop automatically. I'm not thrilled about arranging photos on the scanner bed, and then having to crop them out one by one...

Suggestions?

 

[Derrel]

a MUCH better idea would be to get a copy stand and two lights and a d-slr, and shoot PHOTOGRAPHS of the original prints...it takes just a couple of seconds to properly place a print onto the easel, and then to snap a photo with a d-slr camera, and move onto the next image....a scanner takes forever by comparison! In terms of just TIME spent at the scanner, you will be MILES ahead by purchasing a low-end d-slr camera, a copy stand, and a low-cost macro lens. Scanning 10,000 images? THat will take you maybe a YEAR. That would be my estimate. Well, maybe 25 weekends, is what I mean...

With a d-slr camera, you ought to be able to shoot one image every 10 seconds.

 

[Patrice]

10,000 photos to scan is a rather large task in the amount of time left until christmas. One photo to take out of the box, feed through the scanner, do the touch up using the scanner software and then cataloguing the jpeg will take at a minimum at least 15 minutes. That's 15,000 minutes which is 2500 hours which is 142 days - non stop. Your problem is not the hardware/software but the sheer size of the task.

Take some time to go through the selection and drastically reduce the number of photos you want to scan, maybe down to one or two hundred and you might have a chance to complete this task in the time alloted.

Find one of those auto-feed multi-purpose office machines that will auto-scan to tiff or jpeg and send the result to a hard drive on your computer. Most will scan at reasonably high resolutions thus giving you decent file sizes. Check the specs of various machines available at Staples and such places. Performance is usually linked to price, fast is expensive. Color vs black and white also add to the price and the time needed. Resolution is linked to scan time.

Have fun, that's quite a job you've given yourself.


edit: look at Darrel's post just above - not a bad idea. 10 seconds is assuming you've already taken the images out of the box and lined them up ready to go.

 

[Kerbouchard]

Even if it could be done in 10 seconds, which I doubt, your still looking at 30 hours of labor. I was thinking about 30 seconds per photo to get close to 80 hours. And that's not counting going back and cropping them. A monumental task to be sure.

I second Patrice's advice. Cut them down to a more reasonable amount of photos. Also, nobody in your family is going to spend 15 hours looking at the images you scan, and that's assuming they only look at each for 5 seconds. The sheer volume of photos will make it so unmanagable, most will probably never get past the first hundred or so.

FWIW, for that same $300, you can get about 800 prints scanned professionally. Personally, that's the route I would take.
Best Photo Scanning Price, 8mm to DVD Price

 

[djacobox372]

You can achieve excellent results by simply photographing the photos, and its MUCH faster!

You wont be sacraficing quality, provided you take care to have even, diffused lighting, and a quality lens with no distortion.