any suggestions for self-feeding scanners?

June 5, 2008 12:59 PM

my dad has 4000 4x6 photographs he wants to scan into the computer to archive on flickr. he doesn't want to feed them in by hand, but wants a decent resolution. any suggestions for scanners?

we don't feel comfortable sending them away. the max. budget is 500-1500 dollars. we'd like them to self-feed (the photos, not the negatives) and have separate file names.

posted by melodykramer to sports, hobbies, & recreation (15 comments total)

Get a scaner with an Automatic Document Feeder
posted by fourstar at 1:04 PM on June 5, 2008

fourstar: I've never seen an ADF that will handle photographs instead of normal sheets of paper.
posted by mrbill at 1:06 PM on June 5, 2008

if he's still got the negatives, is there any reason why you don't want to just scan those?
posted by lia at 1:10 PM on June 5, 2008 [1 favorite]

I took the chance & sent mine away. Scancafe.com kicked ass.
posted by bitterkitten at 1:16 PM on June 5, 2008

Have you considered paying a trustworthy high school or university student $10/hr to feed them by hand and save the resulting pictures? Maybe up the rate to $12-15 to have them grouped/classified by event or whatever. If not, there are plenty of batch file-rename utilities for post-processing.
posted by KevCed at 1:20 PM on June 5, 2008

A google search for auto feeder scanner photo yielded this Epson ADF specifically for photos and business cards. It only has a 24-photo capacity which strikes me as impractically small for a 4000-photo job.

On the other hand, having someone do it manually would take about 35 hours (assuming 30s per photo). I just picked up a Canon LiDE 90 with which I am nothing short of thrilled.
posted by KevCed at 1:33 PM on June 5, 2008

2nd Scancafe. 4000 photos x 19 cents = $760 and no effort.
posted by sharkfu at 2:29 PM on June 5, 2008

I've heard great things about ScanCafe. If this is a one time deal, I would really suggest that you pay for a professional service to do it and pick up a mid-range Canon scanner for the occasional half dozen photos you'll want to scan in the future.
posted by cgomez at 2:52 PM on June 5, 2008

he doesn't have the negs.
posted by melodykramer at 2:57 PM on June 5, 2008

Even though you said you didn't want to send them out, fyi Scancafe charges $0.27 per photo (up to 8x10, colour or B&W) which comes out to $1080, which is within your stated budget.
posted by KevCed at 3:57 PM on June 5, 2008

we really dont want to send them out --were willing to purchase and scan...we have the time, but thought auto might be quicker
posted by melodykramer at 4:35 PM on June 5, 2008

Your scanner will only partially be a part of your bottleneck. Whatever scanner you grab, I highly recommend VueScan. It'll handle a lot of the pain in the ass aspects that manufacturer software never seems to deal with well. I'd hazard a blanket statement that no matter what scanner you buy, you'll get better results more quickly by adding Vuescan.

No, I am not the maker of the software. However I have been very happy with the results.

You might look at Wayne Fulton's scanning info here for some guidance as well.
posted by phearlez at 1:38 PM on June 6, 2008

we decided to do it by hand and it has turned into a very enjoyable family project -- we're all taking shifts.
posted by melodykramer at 9:36 PM on June 8, 2008

You could also set up a copy stand w/ a digital camera (and go ahead and buy a cable release, you'll thank me around picture 1500), and with some fast hands and some good blocking (nice that they're all the same size!) you could knock out prolly 100-150 an hour.

Something like this

Scanning is too slow. If you want to get hardcore, you can get polarizing gels for the lights and a polarizing filter for your camera. Little trickier & more $ (like, another $40-50), but prolly worth it.
posted by Lukenlogs at 11:21 PM on June 10, 2008

if anyone is following, we're almost finished:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjkmjk/sets/
posted by melodykramer at 9:34 PM on June 14, 2008