Scanning Photos and Slides! Wow! Update, 2nd page. Its scream time!

[DawnCt1]

During my childhood, and I mean, early childhood, my father was a prolific picture taker. There are tons of photos, black and white, ecktochrome, etc. My father passed away in 1975. My mom passed away in 1996. After I left for nursing school, my dad switched to slides. What does that mean? It means he could take twice the amount of pictures for half of the price. We didn't have a lot of money growing up. Camping was our vacations. Anyway, my brother is 9 years younger than I am. I have all of the slides and pictures at my house and have had them for more than 13 years. We always talked about getting "duplicates" made. I am not sure that there are enough trees to print out all of the pictures. I didn't tell him, because I didn't want him to nag me, but I finally bought a Canon CanoScan 8800. It scans photos, and film; negatives and postives. I finally hooked it up to a lap top that still has a lot of disc space and I have been scanning pictures in for 4 days. I must have scanned 1500 and I am not half through. I am thinking that I will have to divide them up and burn them onto DVDs. Too many to ever consider printing. It is nice to look back at pictures that I haven't seen in years and in many cases, I never saw. My parents liked to camp and square dance. I found pictures of my brother square dancing. I called him today and asked him how much he would pay me not to reveal his secret. If you have pics to copy, this is a really efficient scanner. I will burn a couple of DVDs. Some for him and some for my cousin, who will really like to see all of the pictures that my dad took.

 

[manning]

You may want to look at ACDSEE software for sorting and managing your pictures.

http://www.acdsee.com/

There are others out there but this one comes to mind.

There is also a managing program in adobe elements.

 

[JR6ooo4]

I think that is a burden many of us have at this age. Nevermind all those hi-8 films!

so how big is the overall file so far? Scans seem to have a much larger file size compared to similar resolutions from a digital camera.

Mikeeee

look at this guido, as my wife calls her dad... hehehehehehee
from his air force days

started with a low quality photo

 

[mom2travel]

During my childhood, and I mean, early childhood, my father was a prolific picture taker. There are tons of photos, black and white, ecktochrome, etc. My father passed away in 1975. My mom passed away in 1996. After I left for nursing school, my dad switched to slides. What does that mean? It means he could take twice the amount of pictures for half of the price. We didn't have a lot of money growing up. Camping was our vacations. Anyway, my brother is 9 years younger than I am. I have all of the slides and pictures at my house and have had them for more than 13 years. We always talked about getting "duplicates" made. I am not sure that there are enough trees to print out all of the pictures. I didn't tell him, because I didn't want him to nag me, but I finally bought a Canon CanoScan 8800. It scans photos, and film; negatives and postives. I finally hooked it up to a lap top that still has a lot of disc space and I have been scanning pictures in for 4 days. I must have scanned 1500 and I am not half through. I am thinking that I will have to divide them up and burn them onto DVDs. Too many to ever consider printing. It is nice to look back at pictures that I haven't seen in years and in many cases, I never saw. My parents liked to camp and square dance. I found pictures of my brother square dancing. I called him today and asked him how much he would pay me not to reveal his secret. If you have pics to copy, this is a really efficient scanner. I will burn a couple of DVDs. Some for him and some for my cousin, who will really like to see all of the pictures that my dad took.

That's awesome! So, it worked for slides (sorry, the negative/positive thing threw me off)? If so, I'll need to tell my dad - he has TONS of slides from the '60s through early '80s, including a family trip to WDW (only vacation we ever took that we flew)
He bought something recently that converts record albums to digital music (or some equivalent that he could burn onto CDs and/or load onto his ipod) so he'd love your nifty gadget!

I'm so happy for you to be able to relive those memories!!

 

[DawnCt1]

I think that is a burden many of us have at this age. Nevermind all those hi-8 films!

so how big is the overall file so far? Scans seem to have a much larger file size compared to similar resolutions from a digital camera.

Mikeeee

look at this guido, as my wife calls her dad... hehehehehehee

started with a low quality photo

I dont' have a clue. I will let DH figure it out and sort them. This scanner came with a lot of software. The 35 mm films? I am going to take them to Costco for $19.95/150 ft. I haven't even looked in that direction yet. Edited to add. Some pictures I almost didn't consider scanning because the quality seemed poor. I can't believe the detail once they are scanned in. It really does enhance the quality.

 

[DawnCt1]

That's awesome! So, it worked for slides (sorry, the negative/positive thing threw me off)? If so, I'll need to tell my dad - he has TONS of slides from the '60s through early '80s, including a family trip to WDW (only vacation we ever took that we flew)
He bought something recently that converts record albums to digital music (or some equivalent that he could burn onto CDs and/or load onto his ipod) so he'd love your nifty gadget!

I'm so happy for you to be able to relive those memories!!

It really is heartwrenching in some ways. Its like being transported back in time, like they are still there. Its not like a photo, but tons of photos, larger than life with better clarity than my dad could have imagined.

 

[JR6ooo4]

I believe the slides are better quality than the prints. SLides are the next best thing to the original negatives.

the above photo was from a scan of a slide. but a slide from a very poor camera.

Mikeeee

 

[JR6ooo4]

I dont' have a clue. I will let DH figure it out and sort them. This scanner came with a lot of software. The 35 mm films? I am going to take them to Costco for $19.95/150 ft. I haven't even looked in that direction yet. Edited to add. Some pictures I almost didn't consider scanning because the quality seemed poor. I can't believe the detail once they are scanned in. It really does enhance the quality.

and with memories, content trumps quality. Sometimes it is better that the photo is more blurry than my memory.

and as for "larger than life"
I started with this pic. 1" x 1.5"
scanned on an all-in-one scanner/printer/fax at work at about 3200 DPI
It was the only photo a friend had of their granddad. Maybe great granddad...

with a little photo shop work (like 10 hours) it can now be printed 8"x10"
(I've posted this before, if it sounds familiar. But it is a great selling point for scanning those old photos)

It is a little soft and has some added noise, but it was my first real restoration attempt.
Mikeeee

 

[Kycha]

During my childhood, and I mean, early childhood, my father was a prolific picture taker. There are tons of photos, black and white, ecktochrome, etc. My father passed away in 1975. My mom passed away in 1996. After I left for nursing school, my dad switched to slides. What does that mean? It means he could take twice the amount of pictures for half of the price. We didn't have a lot of money growing up. Camping was our vacations. Anyway, my brother is 9 years younger than I am. I have all of the slides and pictures at my house and have had them for more than 13 years. We always talked about getting "duplicates" made. I am not sure that there are enough trees to print out all of the pictures. I didn't tell him, because I didn't want him to nag me, but I finally bought a Canon CanoScan 8800. It scans photos, and film; negatives and postives. I finally hooked it up to a lap top that still has a lot of disc space and I have been scanning pictures in for 4 days. I must have scanned 1500 and I am not half through. I am thinking that I will have to divide them up and burn them onto DVDs. Too many to ever consider printing. It is nice to look back at pictures that I haven't seen in years and in many cases, I never saw. My parents liked to camp and square dance. I found pictures of my brother square dancing. I called him today and asked him how much he would pay me not to reveal his secret. If you have pics to copy, this is a really efficient scanner. I will burn a couple of DVDs. Some for him and some for my cousin, who will really like to see all of the pictures that my dad took.

I have the same problem...I inherited thousands of slides after my Dad passed. And now I would love to give my brothers copies. I bought a slide adapter for my HP scanner. But it only scans one slide at a time. It would take me forever to scan the thousands of slides I have. What can you tell me about your Canon? Where did you buy it? How much? Does it scan multiple slides at once?

 

[Plantlady]

My dad took photos when he was in the Navy, for four years. Photos of wonderful places, all slides.

I told my mom, I would work on scanning them for him. It could be a bit of a project. But, he would love having them on a cd, so he could watch them.

I don't know if my scanner does slides, I'll have to look into it. This thread is a definite inspiration.

 

[JR6ooo4]

I have the same problem...I inherited thousands of slides after my Dad passed. And now I would love to give my brothers copies. I bought a slide adapter for my HP scanner. But it only scans one slide at a time. It would take me forever to scan the thousands of slides I have. What can you tell me about your Canon? Where did you buy it? How much? Does it scan multiple slides at once?

I have an old HP flatbed scanner. I can fit several photos on the bed. Or several slides or negatives in the backlit holder. But my software adjusts for brightness. so if some photos are bright and others are dark you will get an average brightness file saved. which is not good for either.

It is best to scan one at a time for best brightness and color capture. Loading up the tray with as many as it will hold and selecting individual ones for scanning speeds things up a little.

If you want it done quickly, send it to a lab. Hehehehehehheee


Mikeeee

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

I feel your pain Dawn! My entire childhood is on slide, from about the age of 5 to prom, I dread the day I will have to convert them. My dad is actually going through them now, I mean how many Coast Guard parades do I need pics of?!

I want to make suer I get a really good scanner though. We have at least 20 trays of slides to go through. I hope to start this winter.

 

[NikiM20]

Dawn, Would you mind posting a picture? I would love to use something like this for all of my grandparents pictures.

Thanks,
Niki

 

[MichelleinMaine]

I have the same problem...I inherited thousands of slides after my Dad passed. And now I would love to give my brothers copies. I bought a slide adapter for my HP scanner. But it only scans one slide at a time. It would take me forever to scan the thousands of slides I have. What can you tell me about your Canon? Where did you buy it? How much? Does it scan multiple slides at once?

I had the same situation when my grandfather passed away. I had close to 2500 slides. I started with the HP adapter, but like you said, it took forever.

I ended up using the slide projector. I had my DSLR camera on a tripod. Played around with settings to get a decent picture of the projected image. Once I had that though, it was snap the camera, advance the projector, snap, advance... Quality may have been better on the scanner, but I'd never have gotten it done taking that much time. This way was good-enough!

I put some of them into a slide show. That year for Christmas, everyone got the DVD of the slide show and the digital copies of all the images.

 

[shortbun]

That's cool that you're doing it Dawn! My brother just took all the boxes of family photos and is putting them on discs for us. Great things to have! Your family will love it.

 

[DawnCt1]

I have the same problem...I inherited thousands of slides after my Dad passed. And now I would love to give my brothers copies. I bought a slide adapter for my HP scanner. But it only scans one slide at a time. It would take me forever to scan the thousands of slides I have. What can you tell me about your Canon? Where did you buy it? How much? Does it scan multiple slides at once?

I bought it from www.Newegg.com. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16838111015


I read the reviews. When I first found it, it was over $220. Now the price is down. I think I got it over Memorial Day weekend for $159. No tax, free shipping. It is still time consuming but you can preview the slides so you aren't scanning duplicates or content you don't about rather quickly and do four at a time. For photos, its as much as the glass will hold. There is a multidocument detector. Read the reviews. They are written by people who know more about this than I, which is why I chose this unit.

 

[DawnCt1]

Its scream time. Always read the directions and click all of the little things that apply! I scanned in all of those slides yesterday, for about 4 hours, only to discover that they didn't get saved to the computer and once I turned the scan driver off, they were GONE!!!!!

 

[JR6ooo4]

Its scream time. Always read the directions and click all of the little things that apply! I scanned in all of those slides yesterday, for about 4 hours, only to discover that they didn't get saved to the computer and once I turned the scan driver off, they were GONE!!!!!

Ouch!!! I guess that was just a warmup session. so you don't pull a hamstring or something.

it is a good idea to check the first few files, to make sure you are scanning at an acceptable resolution. and to check if they are really there.

perhaps they are in a folder that the software created that you are unaware of... what did you name them? search the computer for that name. or search *.jpg or *.bmp (whatever file type they were supposed to be saved as) to see if they are hiding somewhere...

Mikeeee

 

[DawnCt1]

Ouch!!! I guess that was just a warmup session. so you don't pull a hamstring or something.

it is a good idea to check the first few files, to make sure you are scanning at an acceptable resolution. and to check if they are really there.

perhaps they are in a folder that the software created that you are unaware of... what did you name them? search the computer for that name. or search *.jpg or *.bmp (whatever file type they were supposed to be saved as) to see if they are hiding somewhere...

Mikeeee

Its just as well. I should have taken advantage of the advanced scanning option; backlight correction, dust and scratch remover, etc, I didn't. Now I am. I am almost tempted to rescan all of the photos I did before that, to use that option. Can I correct them later after they are in the computer?