Scanning and cataloging old photos/negatives

[Laxdad80]

Is this the best site to ask the following?

I have boxes of old photos/negatives. I would like to organize them.

1. If I do it myself what kind of scanner should I use? Can I use my HP Photosmat scanner that I use for everything else?

2. Should I send them away to say FotoBridge?

3. How should I organize the photos and with what software?

4. How do you scan neagatives and slides?

 

[BlackSheep]

It depends on how much time you have vs how much money you want to spend.

I scanned all of my mom's old photos a few years ago, using I think an HP scanner (can't remember exactly what it was). It took a pretty long time, I'd say at least 3-4 minutes per photo (and there were alot of photos!), and the scan quality was only OK. For organizing them, I used a free "photo album" program that I found on the internet by a quick search. The end result wasn't high quality or terribly fancy, but since the intent was just to have a backup version of the original photos, it worked out just fine.

If you don't have the time or patience to do it, though, then I suggest you send the photos out to be scanned.

 

[Josh66]

How many are we talking about? Boxes sounds like a lot.

If you have as many as I think you do - doing it yourself will take a very long time. I would say 50 frames a day (scanning negatives) would be pushing it (depends how much time you put in per day too, obviously).

How to organize is completely up to you - everyone kind of has they're own system, and mine may not work for you. As far as the software - if all you want to do is organize them, you probably already have it.

You'll need a film scanner (it will come with film holders) to scan them. I'm not sure about the scanner you mentioned.


Also, what size film are we talking about? Most film scanners are only going to come with holders for common film sizes - 35mm, 120, 4x5, 8x10. If you have a box full of film that hasn't been made in decades - it might be hard to find a holder for it.
(But it is probably safe to assume that a company in the film scanning business would already have those. Or have another way to scan them - drum scanners (expensive) don't need holders. A pro scanning lab is most likely using one of those.)


Honestly, I think you would be better off sending it out. Film scanners are SLOW. When I said 50 frames a day - that was assuming nothing but scan, crop, rotate. They're going to have dust or scratches that will need to be cloned out, maybe some color correction, all that 'stuff'.


Prints shouldn't be a big deal to scan yourself. Negatives/slides will be.