dparker708

Can anyone suggest a way of doing this for thousands of photos?

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I use an Epson V600 with their software. In the setup, they let you decide where to put the scans. You can put several pics on the glass and scan them at one time.

rmm0605 Loc: Atlanta GA

I did this over a couple of months using my Epson 750Pro flatbed scanner, which has a second scanning system for transparencies. It also has formatting frames that let you place several slides in one frame and scan them together or separately. There's no quick solution to preserving old positives, except farming the job out to a lab.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I would suggest setting aside a great deal of time. Perhaps in smaller blocks, like 30 minutes a day. You'll find that cleaning each slide, making adjustments, etc. will probably take you about 1 hour per box of 36 exposures.
--Bob

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

On a side note, there's a new storage facility in operation near the Arctic Circle. It's storing documents. Everything will be stored on film.

http://www.livescience.com/58497-second-doomsday-vault-opens-for-data.html

philz Loc: Rockaway Township NJ

I started using an Epson V600 last night on old slides. Family and scenics. It worked OK for my test, four slides at a time, but quality required Lightroom adjustments. Slow going though so "thousands " will take a very, very long time. I am going to take some of the same slides and have them done professionally at Costco to determine if their quality is better. Costly at $.32 a slide but may be worth the $160 to get 500 done on a disk.

Jerry, I also have a place in the Catskills, in Windham. Where are you?

WayneT Loc: Paris, TN

I'll backup the use of a V-600 but it does take time. The good thing about the software that comes with the V-600 is it is extremely capable of doing a lot of fixes including dust and scratch removal (it just takes a little more processing time) and it also separates the pictures into singles when scanning multiple photos.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

I have an Epson V700 and even with a top-of-the-line scanner (well, it was when I bought it), scanning is time consuming work. Something like watching paint dry.
Since I am not in a rush to have all my photos and negatives scanned, here's what I do: When I go near the scanner, I remove the photos or negatives from the platen and put them back into the storage binders. Then take the next "batch" of photos or negatives and start the scanner.
Then I walk away to do something else. I could be back near the scanner for the next batch, in 20 minutes, or it maybe several hours. But to me this is the "method" taking the least amount of my time while getting the work done.

While I make use of the scanner/software capabilities of dust and scratch removal, I also have compressed air and anti-static cloth handy, to have both platen and lid of the scanner, and photos and negatives as dust-free as possible - that alone saves many hours of post-processing work.

JMJones Loc: Australian living in Boston

Hello, I'm new to this forum, and finding it very useful. I hope to embark on my own Great Scanning Project in the next few months (boxes and boxes!). My scans will end up on an external drive and I'll be using Lightroom as the organizer. I'm doing some preliminary research, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel. I've just come across "Scan Your Entire Life," and am finding it helpful in terms of things like establishing a thoughtful naming convention from the get-go: https://www.scanyourentirelife.com/.

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Epson FF-640 scanner - I got one a few weeks ago and can tell you it's made for exactly this purpose - you can feed 20 or 25 prints (3x5 up to 8x10 and it will run them through, scanning at either 300 or 600 dpi and with an option to scan the backs of the photos (to grab whatever might be written on the back). The included "Fastfoto" software also offers an option to generate a second copy of the scan with auto-corrections (red eye removal, etc.) that typically works pretty well.

Thus far I've scanned about 500 pictures and imported the JPEGs into Lightroom, where I cull between the original and corrected scan, and where needed add the notes on the back of a given image to the title or comments of that image in LR. It's a lot of work, but infinitely easier than using a traditional flatbed scanner if you have a lot of prints to deal with.

It also can scan thicker prints (one at a time) using an included sleeve - I plan to use this for things like delicate newspaper clippings and Polaroid SX-70 prints.

The printer isn't cheap - about $560 as I recall - but again, if you have a gaggle of snapshots to import it can save you a lot of time.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

I just looked it up: Price is just shy of $900 from both Epson and Staples.
For most it would be less expensive to have their photos and negatives scanned.
I'll stick with the plan I've used for a long time now: Start the scan and walk away to do something else. Then, when I come near the scanner again, reload, start and walk away. Sure, it takes time, but at the moment nobody is waiting for my scans.

ETA: Just had another look at the scanner: It only does photos, not transparencies (negatives or slides).
Besides, at 600 ppi it would be small for 35 mm film images.

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

Well, Best Buy has it for $650 (I got it for $570 a few weeks back; that must have been a special sale)

And the OP specifically stated "scanning photos" - slides were never mentioned.

I used a Nikon scanner with auto-load needed years back to scan my chromes, and obviously 600DPI isn't sufficient for negatives and chromes. But that's not what the OP was asking about.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

I realize he wasn't asking about that. And as you can see, I added that as an afterthought.
Realizing that many people beside OP will read these postings, I felt it was important information to add.

philz Loc: Rockaway Township NJ

Any recommended setting for the Epson V600 (or other such scanner)? Image type (24-bit color? 600 resolution or higher? Jpeg and quality versus .tif file? Use Grain reduction, ICE versus dust removal, unsharp mask, color restoration, etc.? Do I have to preview before scanning? Takes more time.