Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with photography and scanning

How to best organize a lifetime of family photos?

mintchip — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 06:44:07 -0800

Elderly parent has boxes and boxes of photos which are not in any particular order. Some are loose, some are in albums, and a few are on CDs. I have offered to assist in the organization and scanning of some or all of these photos. What would be the easiest way to accomplish this? This is such a large project that I'm a bit at a loss as to how to proceed. For example, should I take everything out of the albums and picture frames? And if I do, should I buy all new albums so they would be a consistent size? Also, would you recommend I have everything scanned or just the best shots?

Any tips from folks who've undertaken a similar project would be much appreciated.

My Epson Scanner is producing weird, noisy, solarized scans of my transparencies. Help?

Senor Cardgage — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:51:23 -0800

My Epson Scanner is producing weird, noisy, solarized scans of my transparencies. Help? I have an Epson Perfection 4490 Photo scanner. I am scanning some color positive transparent film from 120s.

So far it has worked once

but since then (without changing any settings at all) all I get are these

Tips and Hints for the Occasionally Klutzy Erstwhile Photographer

not_on_display — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:48:22 -0800

A few days ago, I unknowingly spilled water on a pile of old photo prints that I am planning on scanning. They dried, and now, as a result, the bottom twenty are stuck together. How can I separate the prints without tearing or otherwise ruining them? If that is impossible, I still have the negatives somewhere; how can I best scan negatives into a regular flatbed scanner?

Scanning BW film

lord_yo — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:43:42 -0800

How should I scan b/w film negatives? I'm scanning my whole 35mm film negative archive in hi res, and there are a couple of black and white films among them. Will I get better results if I scan them in color, and convert them afterwards, or could I just scan them in b/w directly? Is there any reason why I shouldn't do the latter?

Ah, the days before digital.

sararah — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:49:43 -0800

I'm looking for the best way to get good quality scans of old photos and then store them permanently in archival albums or envelopes. On a recent mission to declutter and avoid Actual Work, I have been sifting through the contents of my closet and going through old photos and paperwork. I started scanning in a few of the photos, but my free with mail-in rebate Canon MP460 isn't really the greatest for archival work. I personally don't have a ton of pictures (although I probably have several hundred), but if this works well I would also consider doing it for my parents. I don't really have many of the negatives or they are in complete disarray, so scanning the prints is going to be the best option for me. Most of the photos are 4x6 prints, many of them glossy finish, developed at your local megamart, etc.

-What are online or local scanning services that would do the best job of archival scanning of pictures? I live in Iowa so the closest "metropolis" to me is Des Moines.
-Alternatively, is there a reasonably priced scanner that I should buy that would pay for itself versus sending the photos out?
-After I'm done scanning everything, how to store? Some my pictures are already starting to stick to themselves, and I'm sure many of my parents' are just as bad. I'm looking for the best acid-free photo albums or envelopes/boxes.

The skinny on scanning

strawberryviagra — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:52:03 -0800

I'm intending to self-publish a short run book of photography - I need advice on image preparation (from original neg and tranny) for what will most likely be an offset printing process. I am/was a photographer, and for 8 years I put at least one roll of film through my camera every day - most of which I've never printed. The book is principally for my children, their chidren and friends, but that's just a bit of background.

Back in the day, if an image was to be published, it needed to be drum scanned, so what I really want to know is - can I use a high end desktop scanner (ie: Nikon Coolscan 9000) to attain the level of quality required for excellent reproduction (scanning medium format and 35mm).

I'm also interested in any other thoughts/suggestions you may have, including printers who specialise in this type of work, other scanners that I should consider, et cetera.

Shake It Like a Polaroid Pictcha

spicynuts — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 09:13:22 -0800

Recommendations for shops in Manhattan that can scan a large quantity of polaroids. I've been doing a lot of shooting with Polaroid film lately. Many of my subjects have been asking for copies or jpgs of the shots. I only have a negative scanner. Does anyone know a quality, professional shop in Manhattan that I can take about 200 of these for scanning to a CD?

Alternatively, if anyone has had any success using a basic desktop scanner to do this, tips would be appreciated - I might be able to go buy a cheap one.

How do I make cheap B&W prints?

ganseki — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 15:13:31 -0800

I need a cheap way of developing and printing black and white film, but I have neither the space nor the inclination to build a darkroom. In order to play around with film, I've bought a couple of film cameras (Olympus Trip 35 and an OM-10) and a bunch of Tri-X. Now I discover that professional B&W film developing is expensive (around 10 UKP). Making my own prints isn't really an option, but developing the negatives myself on a small scale would be possible (and cheap!), so I was thinking about budget negative scanners.

I guess I'd be looking for something under 50 UKP (secondhand probably), capable of scanning well enough to produce good 6x4s.

Am I out of luck? And if this is a non-starter, is there an alternative solution?

Photo scanning service recommendations?

dmd — Wed, 03 May 2006 19:46:52 -0800

We have several hundred old family photographs in various sizes, shapes, and conditions that we would like to have scanned. We're looking for advice from anyone who has had personal experience with specific companies. (Note: we don't have any negatives.)

There are lots and lots of companies out there doing this (it's rather an easy business to set up), and we're hoping someone has used or knows someone who has used a particular company and can give us some hints as to who's reputable...

Scanning medium format

sgt.serenity — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:56:39 -0800

Scanning Medium Format : Help Me ! I bought an Epson 3490 , i thought it would scan medium format , i think i'm wrong.
I've lost the receipt , i dont have a credit card or anything , surely there's a hack or a mod or something to make this stupid goddam scanner work with medium format slide film ?
It scans them partially , and there's a scanner at college but everyone fights over it and it's very stressful.
You get tutors throwong you out the room , students in the year above you telling you they have priority etc etc

Experience with 35mm negative scanning services?

jimw — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 15:38:55 -0800

I have negatives from ten rolls of 35mm color film (about 240 pictures total) that I'd like to get scanned. Has anyone had any experience with companies that do this sort of scanning? Any to recommend or avoid? Two that I'm looking at are Memories Renewed and BritePix, but all I have to think well of them is their reasonably designed websites and reasonable-looking prices.

Family Photo Project

Mroz — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 16:57:02 -0800

Family Photo Project - I'm working on a "How to" for a project to turn my family's entire photo history into a easily searchable, sortable, and archived digital collection. I would like some insight on my plan. You can find my plan here.
You can find the eventual Flickr home here.

I have a ton of questions, but what I really would like is for some people to read the plan over and see what you think about it. Are there any major problems with the details? Is there anything I'm over looking? Any story's? Any other plans exist that I can reference? This is a lot of work to do and I'm trying to anticipate problems, before I have to go back and start from the beginning.

If you could make any suggestions or comments, that would be much appreciated. But for those more interested, here are some more detailed questions I had.

1. Am I scanning the photos at a high enough resolution?
2. Am I saving the files the right way, in the correct file formats?
3. Is my scanner of a quality that is up to this task?
4. Should I be color correcting and cropping old photos? (I feel this takes away from their authenticity when I fix the colors. Or am I just fixing what time couldn't)
5. Is the software I'm using (Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements 3 with photo album) the correct software to scan, fix, and Album my photos.
6. I'm only putting the lower resolution Jpgs into the Adobe Elements Album, should I be placing the originals in there too and somehow connecting them together?
7. When I crop a photo such as a 3.5x3.5 that has a white border. Should I crop the excess around the white border? Or crop the white border off as well?

Paying a service to do this for me is not an option as I'm sure its pricey, and I'm a poor college student. But...

8. What reliable services are there that would do this? Any story's or experiences?
9. I don't plan on scanning the negatives (even though the scanner can) as I don't like the way they come out. But for the future, what services are there where I can have the negatives professionally scanned.

10. Is there anything about the project that makes it pointless because it will have to be redone in a few years?

Please pass on any links, comments, stories or advice. I'll take it all in and am going to try to reference it into my plan.

Best way to get digital images from film negatives?

brain_drain — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 21:53:50 -0800

What is the best way to get high resolution digital images when developing film? We’re getting married this weekend. We have a wedding photographer who seems terrific and comes highly recommended. But she is sort of “old school” with respect to digital media – she shoots in film and doesn’t seem familiar with the whole gamut of options for digital images. We get the negatives after we get our prints. But she doesn’t have a standard option for also providing digital images, and she doesn’t seem to know all the options for how to do that. We would like to get digital images that are scanned in a high enough resolution that we could print nice 8x10 and smaller photos from them down the road (and that will better stand the test of time than our prints and negatives).

So, my question is: what is the best and most cost-effective way to get high resolution digital images from film? Specifically:

1. How much would it cost to have, say, 20 rolls of film transferred into high-res images (a) at the same time the film is developed, or (b) later after we get the negatives?

2. Is there any advantage (cost, quality, etc.) to having the digital images made at the same time the film is developed?

3. Any recommendations for services who do this kind of negative scanning if we choose to do it ourselves after we get our negatives?

4. What exactly should we ask for? I.e., what resolution images, what scan DPI (if that is even a variable), etc. I don’t know the lingo and would like to be able to convey accurately what we want.

Scanning negatives

Scoo — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 13:06:32 -0800

I have a Canon CanoScan 9950F and I'm attempting to use it to scan 126-format negatives. Technically, this film fits into the scanner's 35mm film guide, but
since 35mm film has a top border and 126-format film does not, this
causes me to lose the top of my photos. Sometimes this loss is
unimportant, but more often than not, I end up missing peoples' heads
or the tops of Christmas trees, etcetera. I really need a way
(preferrably some kind of easily-loadable caddy) to scan these so that
I get the entire photograph.

Bulk Photo Scanning

abbyladybug — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 11:32:03 -0800

I'm a long-time shutterbug. For the past five years, I have used a digital camera, but before that, it was all 35 millimeter. I have a backlog of thousands of photographs I'd like to scan. I'd like to find a scanner that has an automatic feeder so I can batch-scan lots of pictures at once. My photos are mostly the standard 4x6 size you get at the local photo store. For the record, I am more focused on really cataloguing my life, so I have a large quantity of photographs rather than lots of super high quality art shots. Sure, I want a quality scanner, but I don't need top of the line. I'm more interested in a really top rate feeder mechanism. Tell me what you know!

Nonstandard negative scanning

clever sheep — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 15:18:53 -0800

I have inherited approx. 100 very old family photo negatives, many of highly nonstandard sizes, some non-square (seem to be hand-cut with scissors, perhaps), etc. I started scanning a few and fell in love with them not only as heirlooms but as Americana--they're dynamite. But I'm getting lost when I try to figure out how to get the lot safely & archivally hi-res scanned. [MI] I've done some quick reading about DigitalICE, found out it will work for chromogenic C41process B&W but not traditional silver halide. From there on, I'm lost; don't know how to ID exactly what I have. I'd also love to find a provider, particularly (but not necessarily) one located in Minnesota (handing over these negatives will be nervous enough, without mailing them to boot) who could handle the scanning for me. Any recommended tools or vendors? Dankeschoen!

digitizing old photos

Tubes — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 23:46:00 -0800

I have a boatload of 35mm and ASP photos that I'd like to digitize. The options I've found are either expensive or insanely tedious... [M.I.] My HP ScanJet3400C flatbed does a decent job for web use, but gadzooks I'll go insane scanning, & especially cropping to actual size, hundreds of photos. I wish I could find something like a sheet-feeder scanner that would automatically size the scan result to the borders of the photo.

I know there's the negative-scanning alternative. I tried a friend's high-end scanner with negative adapter once, but it scanned tiny dust and lint particles so effectively that it required much manual touch-up, and the cropping was still neccessary. And ASP would require yet more hardware.

Then there's scanning services which charge huge (likely justified) fees to digitize negatives to disk.

Am I missing any options? Is there a magic piece of hardware or software that would make this a feasible DIY project?

Scanning Negatives

biscotti — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 10:08:19 -0800

Film scanning! I have a fair number of negatives (easily a few thousand) which I need to scan (every day they call to me telling me that they are decaying and need to be recorded digitally). (the more it is inside) I have never scanned film before, and the cursory reading I've done thus far seems to indicate that it can take a while to get good at it, which makes my initial idea of just renting a scanner for a week or two seem unrealistic, it seems I might need a month or more. Is it better to rent or buy, and which models might I want to look at? I likely won't need to do much film scanning after I do these, but I know many scanners do film as well as being regular scanners - my idea is that I could probably afford to rent a better-quality scanner than I could afford to buy (is there a major difference in quality/features that are actually useful between the cheap and expensive ones?). Any tips and tricks about film scanning would be appreciated. I'm just starting to learn about this, so I don't even really have a solid-enough frame of reference to know what I should care about and what I shouldn't.