Photo Scanner?

[ClaraOswald]

Has anyone recently (in the past year or so) purchased a good/easy to use photo scanner? I'm in my 40s and have a couple decades worth of printed photos that I would love to be able to have in digital form and saved on the cloud or something. If our house ever burned down or something horrible, I'd be devastated to lose them all.

We have a printer/scanner combo right now. But it's kind of a pain to get the photos into a nice format. And the colors always end up seeming kind of blown out.

I'd love some type where you literally just send them through the scanner and they pop up on my laptop. But when I look online, there are so many options and I have no clue which one might be best.

So I just thought I'd ask here. Thanks!

Our old printer, about a decade ago, had a decent scanner.
So just for fun, here are a few pictures from the Magic Kingdom taken in 1987.

 

[disykat]

I have an Epson FF-680W (It's right next to my computer so I actually know that!) and I've been pleased with how it works. I can do about 30 photos at a time and it sends them right to whatever account I set up on my computer.

I got stuck at 1992 when my oldest was born, knowing there are so many pictures to be scanned between then and when we got a digital camera because of the age of the kids. It's not that many years though, so maybe that can be my January project.

 

[ClaraOswald]

I also need to change all of my old home videos into digital files too. That's going to be a massive task that I'm not even sure I have the tools for.

 

[disykat]

I really need to finish up because I have several friends who would love to borrow my scanner when I'm done!

 

[Sheryl2059]

I also recommend epson. I got one also, v300 so a little older now, specifically for photos and negatives in addition to the usual and the results have been great. That said, with very old photos you will often need to adjust things no matter what you do. Depending on how important they are. In which case, if you still have the negatives it would be even better. Of course for old photos from the 80's few people still have the negatives.

 

[_19disnA]

Doesn't scanning cause a loss of picture quality/fidelity? Apparently you no longer have the original files/negatives and only have printed photos to work from?

 

[fla4fun]

Has anyone recently (in the past year or so) purchased a good/easy to use photo scanner? I'm in my 40s and have a couple decades worth of printed photos that I would love to be able to have in digital form and saved on the cloud or something. If our house ever burned down or something horrible, I'd be devastated to lose them all.

We have a printer/scanner combo right now. But it's kind of a pain to get the photos into a nice format. And the colors always end up seeming kind of blown out.

I'd love some type where you literally just send them through the scanner and they pop up on my laptop. But when I look online, there are so many options and I have no clue which one might be best.

So I just thought I'd ask here. Thanks!

Our old printer, about a decade ago, had a decent scanner.
So just for fun, here are a few pictures from the Magic Kingdom taken in 1987.

View attachment 919974

View attachment 919975

View attachment 919976

Have you also asked your question on the photography board here at the DIS? They may have some good suggestions as well.

 

[disykat]

Possibly, but most people don't have thousands of negatives to work with. I have many negatives, but trying to find the exact pictures I want to digitize would be impossible. It's really easy to grab some favorites out of photo albums.

 

[ClaraOswald]

Doesn't scanning cause a loss of picture quality/fidelity? Apparently you no longer have the original files/negatives and only have printed photos to work from?

Yeah but I don't have negatives. And it's really just for me to be able to look at the pictures on my computer and whatnot. They don't have to be fantastic looking. Just decent enough to not look awful. I'd show an example of what our current scanner looks like but I only have pictures of people in them scanned that I wouldn't want to post.

Have you also asked your question on the photography board here at the DIS? They may have some good suggestions as well.

Nope, I didn't even know there was one. I'll check it out. Thanks!

 

[Frwinkley]

I just took pictures of my old photos with my Iphone and uploaded them that way. The picture quality wasn't good to begin with, so taking a photo of a photo wasn't that much of a stretch!

 

[hertamaniac]

It may seem obvious, but are you setting the DPI scan number high enough to be print quality? IIRC, somewhere around 300 DPI is acceptable for most printing whereas about 70-80 DPI is adequate for online viewing and saves consider storage space.

It's been a few decades since I did some printing/scanning for a business catalog.

 

[SueInBoston]

Another vote for Epson FF-680W. I've tried a number of ways to digitize. I first tried a Kodak film scanner, the problem with that is you can't tell which photo is the "good" one just by looking at the negaive, it was too time consuming to determine the "good" photo. Then I tried Costco Next photo service with some negative and slides, the results are very good and price was reasonable. But you still have to organize them after the fact. Then I decided to get the Epson for convenience, now if I come across an old photo, I just scan it and tag it. The quality is decent, I most likely won't print the photo, it'll be viewed digitally.

 

[Lewisc]

Consider a commercial service such as
https://www.scanmyphotos.com/

 

[happybaker]

I just took pictures of my old photos with my Iphone and uploaded them that way. The picture quality wasn't good to begin with, so taking a photo of a photo wasn't that much of a stretch!

I did something similar. I downloaded a photoscan app on my phone and used that.

 

[GoingSince1990]

I have an Epson FF-680W (It's right next to my computer so I actually know that!) and I've been pleased with how it works. I can do about 30 photos at a time and it sends them right to whatever account I set up on my computer.

I got stuck at 1992 when my oldest was born, knowing there are so many pictures to be scanned between then and when we got a digital camera because of the age of the kids. It's not that many years though, so maybe that can be my January project.

I also bought one of these a few months ago and am still completely happy with it.

 

[_19disnA]

Buying a scanner you may only use one time seems like a waste of money to me when there are various other options as mentioned above.

 

[disykat]

Buying a scanner you may only use one time seems like a waste of money to me when there are various other options as mentioned above.

Depends on how many hundreds or thousands of pictures you want to scan. Once you add up the costs and convenience costs then subtract out the value of either loaning it out or actually selling it when you are done with it to recoup some of the costs, I don't think it's a bad value. I've decided I don't plan on selling it, but it still has "value" to me as something I can continue to use myself and loan out to friends. I'm generally pretty cheap, but don't regret buying it.

My parent's photos are done and I gave thumb drives to my siblings, now I'm working on mine and the kids will receive them. I could get a lot of Christmas gifts out of this thing!

 

[easyas123]

it still has "value" to me as something I can continue to use myself and loan out to friends. I'm generally pretty cheap, but don't regret buying it.

After I saw what just one box cost to send them out to be scanned, then I thought about several boxes of photos I have - that printer would more than pay for itself! Plus, when you add in you can pass it on to another family member or friend to do the same, it seemed like a good investment.

I never thought to much about it when I first opened this thread, but now I'm really giving it some thought. Especially as I look at the boxes of photos I have when I got my holiday decorations out! I'd hate to lose them in a flood or fire or any other instance.

 

[SueInBoston]

One project I did alone was worth the cost to me. A dear friend's dad (90) is fighting cancer with very low energy. we scanned his old pictures and put on his iPad, he loves looking at his old photos.

 

[ClaraOswald]

Depends on how many hundreds or thousands of pictures you want to scan. Once you add up the costs and convenience costs then subtract out the value of either loaning it out or actually selling it when you are done with it to recoup some of the costs, I don't think it's a bad value. I've decided I don't plan on selling it, but it still has "value" to me as something I can continue to use myself and loan out to friends. I'm generally pretty cheap, but don't regret buying it.

My parent's photos are done and I gave thumb drives to my siblings, now I'm working on mine and the kids will receive them. I could get a lot of Christmas gifts out of this thing!

Exactly. I have Decades of photos of my own plus my parents photos.

Also, I would NEVER send away my only copies to some company. Too risky.