Need to digitize some old photos/negatives

[Herdfan]

What is a decent product for a reasonable price?

I see several online running from $150 and up.

Would really like one that does photos, negative and slides.

Don't want to spend a fortune, but still want something of good quality. Will probably use a service like Legacybox for some old movies, but they would get way expensive for doing photos.

Thanks,

 

[Eric]

There are a lot of services that will do it for you, I had to research it when my mom passed and I took over the responsibility for digitizing all the photos she had in her albums. In the end I ended up doing 500 myself using my iPhone.

The first question is how many you have, it's really not very cheap (at least IMO). For example you can get 500 done from $80 on up for example. Considering you have slides as well it makes doing it yourself a little more complicated, but you could always buy a high speed scanner but are looking at over $500 for something decent.

As mentioned, I did this myself and it's not really too hard and only took a few hours using my iPhone. There are scanning apps, google makes a great free one that you have to scan all four corners but will remove the glare, but I just wanted to take a single shot of each photo and move on.

So I jerry rigged this setup with a blanket halfway covering the image and that removed most of the glare, had the iPhone on a rigged stand to hold it in place and then just took a shot of each photo on the table and they all came out great, and in the high quality resolution of the iPhone camera. Then put them all into a free photo album on Google Photos and sent it out to all of the family.

Rig

Results

 

[Herdfan]

I am looking at a few thousand.

 

[Roller]

I agree with Eric. I've digitized photos using a flatbed scanner, DSLR, and my iPhone. The results with the iPhone weren't as good as with the other two methods, but they were more than adequate for casual viewing and sharing.

Slides and negatives are much more labor-intensive, but can be done with a flatbed scanner if you're willing to put in the time and effort. (There are dedicated slide scanners, but I didn't want to invest in one.) Apart from the tedium, the hardest part of digitizing slides was cleaning them. When I did this a few years ago, my slides were already 30 or more years old, and many had accumulated grime that couldn't be cleared with a brush or compressed air. I've read that alcohol works if you're careful, but I was too lazy. So I scanned them and then deleted the spots in Lightroom, which was quite effective.

I've done a handful of negatives as well, but they were a lot of work in Photoshop.

 

[Alli]

I am looking at a few thousand.

You might want to check out LegacyBox. Here’s the page with pricing for photos. They work like the post office’s “if it fits it ships” concept. They send you a box, you stuff it, they digitize it.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I don’t know about for slides, but I use the Photomyne app on my iPhone to scan old photos and it does a great job. If you aren’t perfectly square over the picture it will auto straighten the angle and crop out anything that isn’t part of the photo.

 

[Roller]

I am looking at a few thousand.

One option is to wait until you're too old to recognize people in the photos, which can cut down the number considerably.

I'm sort of kidding, but I have many photographs of family members and friends I can't confidently identify, and the folks who could are no longer alive or are otherwise unavailable. So, seriously, I think one of your first steps should be to record who's in each picture, consulting older relatives as needed.

 

[Eric]

One option is to wait until you're too old to recognize people in the photos, which can cut down the number considerably.

I'm sort of kidding, but I have many photographs of family members and friends I can't confidently identify, and the folks who could are no longer alive or are otherwise unavailable. So, seriously, I think one of your first steps should be to record who's in each picture, consulting older relatives as needed.

When I was scanning all those photos from my mom there were so many people from her parents generation that I didn't recognize, so you raise a great point here. I still scanned them all but wonder who will ever know who they are, I think proper labeling and cataloging are mandatory or they'll just drop into the abyss.