Some years back I embarked on a project to scan my parents pictures. I think there were over 4,000 until I was done. I don’t remember the ratio, but there were some negatives and some prints. Oh and trying to unduplicate (this picture is a print of this negative) was a bear, because the prints and pictures had sometimes gotten separated.
I set up the scanner in the living room and worked on it while we were watching TV. It took months, but I did it.
Then I did my in-laws’ pictures, who didn’t have nearly as many, fortunately. And they were better organized to start, so that felt like a walk in the park by comparison.
I noticed my parents took a ton of pictures of my older brothers, but very few of me… But there were a ton of pictures of the bridge construction next to their house… Hmmm!
I did the same with my own photos during the lockdown years. Started by scanning physical photos, then got hold of any old negative scanner which supported APS. I’ve scanned everything except I seem to be missing one of my APS negative cartridges. I now can’t get rid of my negative scanner because I know I’ll find that missing cartridge as soon as I do. I also can’t do much with the old PC as it’s the only full size one which will take the SCSI card that I have.
Damn, aps support?! I assume you have to take the negatives out of the cartridge.
There’s a seller on ebay that 3D prints negative holders for the scanner I have, so for example I could scan the 110 cartridge (not the really old roll film) negatives I have. I wonder if he makes one to do APS.
But on the other hand, the APS camera I had was cheap, point and shoot, and the prints came back with a note that they were severely overexposed, so it probably wasn’t even working correctly. Not much point in spending money to save some forgettable shots of a local river.
My brother in Christ, please tell me what hardware you used and method. I have around 20K print photos that need digitizing and short of paying out of the wazoo for a professional service to do it, I’m at a total loss
I have an Epson scanner, though I’d have to check the exact model. The one I have has the light so I can scan negatives or prints, but if you’re only doing prints you wouldn’t need that feature.
I used Vuescan to do it. Paid software, but none of the open source options were as smooth for high volume scanning (this was some years ago, so that might have changed). Vuescan did a pretty good job of adjusting colors and all automatically after the scan. It was worth the money for the time savings alone.
Basically just sit there, load the print, hit scan, wait, remove the print, repeat. You’ll learn the sound of the scanner when it’s returning to the top of the glass, at which point the print is safe to remove even if the software is still processing. That saves a little time.
It’s tedious, no question. Scanning negatives is better because you can get up to six in one shot. Get a second negative holder and you can have one scanning while you’re setting up the other one. It took me months and months.
Also consider culling the pictures you scan. Did I need to scan all of those rolls of the bridge construction? Nah.
Edit - your comment has me thinking, I need work in winter time. Maybe this could be a side job…
Some years back I embarked on a project to scan my parents pictures. I think there were over 4,000 until I was done. I don’t remember the ratio, but there were some negatives and some prints. Oh and trying to unduplicate (this picture is a print of this negative) was a bear, because the prints and pictures had sometimes gotten separated.
I set up the scanner in the living room and worked on it while we were watching TV. It took months, but I did it.
Then I did my in-laws’ pictures, who didn’t have nearly as many, fortunately. And they were better organized to start, so that felt like a walk in the park by comparison.
I noticed my parents took a ton of pictures of my older brothers, but very few of me… But there were a ton of pictures of the bridge construction next to their house… Hmmm!
I did the same with my own photos during the lockdown years. Started by scanning physical photos, then got hold of any old negative scanner which supported APS. I’ve scanned everything except I seem to be missing one of my APS negative cartridges. I now can’t get rid of my negative scanner because I know I’ll find that missing cartridge as soon as I do. I also can’t do much with the old PC as it’s the only full size one which will take the SCSI card that I have.
Damn, aps support?! I assume you have to take the negatives out of the cartridge.
There’s a seller on ebay that 3D prints negative holders for the scanner I have, so for example I could scan the 110 cartridge (not the really old roll film) negatives I have. I wonder if he makes one to do APS.
But on the other hand, the APS camera I had was cheap, point and shoot, and the prints came back with a note that they were severely overexposed, so it probably wasn’t even working correctly. Not much point in spending money to save some forgettable shots of a local river.
My brother in Christ, please tell me what hardware you used and method. I have around 20K print photos that need digitizing and short of paying out of the wazoo for a professional service to do it, I’m at a total loss
I have an Epson scanner, though I’d have to check the exact model. The one I have has the light so I can scan negatives or prints, but if you’re only doing prints you wouldn’t need that feature.
I used Vuescan to do it. Paid software, but none of the open source options were as smooth for high volume scanning (this was some years ago, so that might have changed). Vuescan did a pretty good job of adjusting colors and all automatically after the scan. It was worth the money for the time savings alone.
Basically just sit there, load the print, hit scan, wait, remove the print, repeat. You’ll learn the sound of the scanner when it’s returning to the top of the glass, at which point the print is safe to remove even if the software is still processing. That saves a little time.
It’s tedious, no question. Scanning negatives is better because you can get up to six in one shot. Get a second negative holder and you can have one scanning while you’re setting up the other one. It took me months and months.
Also consider culling the pictures you scan. Did I need to scan all of those rolls of the bridge construction? Nah.
Edit - your comment has me thinking, I need work in winter time. Maybe this could be a side job…
Holy shit. You crazy motherfucker. You actually put the photos on the frame one by one? And scanned them one by one?
I gotta say…
You may be insane, but you get the job done, as opposed to me, who am still trying to figure out the best way to do it.
That’s why we are still trying to understand how they built the pyramids, while the pyramid builders simply did it.