My parents collected a lot of photos from my youth in seven folders. The photos are cut out by hand, glued on cardboard and annotated with handwritten notes or sketches. My mother told me, that somewhere there should also be (almost) all negatives of those photos…
I thought about scanning the albums, mainly to preserve the photos (i.e., digital backup) and to be able to re-print pages. However, I think it could also be worth to run some AI tools over it, to OCR the text, annotate the photos etc… However, the focus should be on gathering all the data first.
I have a Canon N650U scanner and did some tests with it. I think it is not the best scanner and one major problem is the height difference between the photo and the cardboard. It looks like the depth of field of this scanner is not that great. Furthermore, image quality is also not the best - even with 1200dpi (perhaps though, I did not calibrate it correctly… Also, the glass was dirty from the inside, and I had to clean it. Perhaps the optics is also not in good shape.) But lastly, it takes forever. Scanning with 1200dpi takes about 2-3min per page. Every folder has around 140 A4 pages - thus, scanning alone would take roughly 35h… realistically even more (scanning pages twice, handling of the paper etc…)
I can of course buy/rent a better scanner etc… But I would specifically know: Has anyone here done something like this successfully? What are important learnings from you that I should take into account from the beginning?
My sister has the same amount of folders at home, so once I did it successfully there will be more And maybe I can even find the negatives… (would then be interesting to find the original photo from the cut out one…)
That would be an option - nevertheless I think the scanner is just not that good.
But what if I would need higher res? However, I guess it does make more sense to scan negatives than printed photos?
Hello, your scanner dates from 2000 or so, so it’s a bit old. That doesn’t have to be a problem, I own an Epson Perfection Photo that I bought in the same time frame and it still works very good.
I understand your scanner is a flatbed scanner only, so no way to scan negatives. Well, you can scan the negatives on the glass surface, but that leads to inferior quality. And scanning hundreds or thousands of negatives is really a hell of a work.
For your project, you might be interested to rent or buy a dedicated negative scanner, there are devices around that are not that expensive and that speed up your workflow in an important way.
yes, I know and that was not the intention. The main project shall be to scan the paper stuff - the negatives have to be found first They are somewhere in the basement in some box
yes, if I get to negative scanning, that would be the way to go.
If it was me, I’d try to photograph the album in its entirety. I’d think the complete album, with all the annotations, will be much more personally valuable than the photos by themselves.
Unless you do find the negatives, then (have them) digitized.
I think what @bastibe was suggesting is using a camera and setting up a copy stand instead of using a scanner. Then your lens and camera are the limiting factor, but they are probably better than your scanner. You could also shoot RAW+JPEG, so you would have the JPEGs for quick use and the RAWs if you wanted to do something more with the photo.
ah okay, misunderstood it!
yes that could be an option too. But I would need to setup proper light etc… So maybe not that much cheaper than a good second hand scanner.
But once everything is set up, it should probably be way faster.
I just tested to photograph one page. Of course, the light is mediocre and far from homogeneous but in principle I get a reasonable sharp image from ~80cm away with my EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/5.6 on the R7. To get the lighting right is probably the most hassle as the photos are printed on glossy paper… and then there is the dust…
And maybe I can even find the negatives… (would then be interesting to find the original photo from the cut out one…)