Services that scan film photos in large batches?

[Participant]

Hi all

I've got a lot of printed photos that I need to store electronically then chuck away. We have scanners at work and whilst they look fine when I put them directly on the plate, the autofeed reduces the quality severely for some reason. I only have a flatbed scanner at home and doing it myself would take hours, possibly days!

Can anyone recommend services that will do all this for me and with good quality? Can either be highstreet or online.

Thanks.

 

[Tomsk]

What scanner do you have? With my Canon multifunctional I can place two pictures on the glass and the software will automatically determine there are two pictures and do minor rotational adjustments.

Personally I would rather scan all the pictures myself to ensure that they're all OK before disposing of the originals.

 

[AHarvey]

Have you not got the negatives to the prints? or were they all digital files?

 

[Participant]

What scanner do you have? With my Canon multifunctional I can place two pictures on the glass and the software will automatically determine there are two pictures and do minor rotational adjustments.

Personally I would rather scan all the pictures myself to ensure that they're all OK before disposing of the originals.

I have an Epson all-in-one, can't remember the model number, but it's a mid range one with a flatbed scanner as I mentioned above.

I don't understand your comment about doing them myself so I could check they're all ok. Surely I could do that anyway? I'm not going to bin them until I've checked them and backed them up.

Have you not got the negatives to the prints? or were they all digital files?

All of them were film originally and I've got some negatives but not all. I want digital copies for other reasons but for storage convenience though, i.e. ease of sharing, finding and viewing.

 

[AHarvey]

Well if you can get your hands on a negative scanner or find a company that will do it that will be a faster way then scanning the individual image. As for the rest, you will either look at doing them one by one as I don't know anyone that would do bulk scanning like that

 

[Tomsk]

I don't understand your comment about doing them myself so I could check they're all ok. Surely I could do that anyway? I'm not going to bin them until I've checked them and backed them up.

I'm guessing you have hundreds, if not thousands of photos to do. I wouldn't be able to sit and look at a PC screen checking through loads of pictures without me missing some.

By doing it myself, pictures are only coming through at one or two per minute, and it would take several sessions to complete scanning all of them.


As an example, I recently scanned in a camera guide book of ~280 pages (I was converting it for my ereader). It took me a few hours, but the slow rate meant I could check each page as it was scanned and I was able to watch some TV, browse web etc at the same time. In fact I had to scan it a second time, because I forgot to enable descreening.

 

[Participant]

I'm guessing you have hundreds, if not thousands of photos to do. I wouldn't be able to sit and look at a PC screen checking through loads of pictures without me missing some.

By doing it myself, pictures are only coming through at one or two per minute, and it would take several sessions to complete scanning all of them.


As an example, I recently scanned in a camera guide book of ~280 pages (I was converting it for my ereader). It took me a few hours, but the slow rate meant I could check each page as it was scanned and I was able to watch some TV, browse web etc at the same time. In fact I had to scan it a second time, because I forgot to enable descreening.

More hundreds than thousands. No way I'm sitting down and doing this for hours, would rather pay someone hence the question as to whether there are any companies that offer this service.

As regards checking, I'd sample check.