Digitalizing old pics

[dayav07]

I currently have a collection of about 2000-3000 digital pics. Starts about 9 years ago when I got my 1st digital camera, a Sony 1.3 MP cybershot.

Now I want to start scanning all my old pics from the 90's. Is it a good idea? I see one good point; I can keep ALL my pics in one place. (my hdd).

What are the other pros and cons?

Any input is appreciated

 

[nakedpeanut]

Are you going to back up your pics on to another pc? into the cloud?
What happens when there is a fire/water damage, theft or data corruption?

 

[koffiejunkie]

Pros: like you mentioned - having it on your computer.

Cons: price of scanner capable of doing half decent film scans. Unless you simply want to scan the prints

I'm looking at scanning my negatives. Nikon's Coolscan models are pretty much the best there is, but they're pretty expensive. One stop down (as far as I can find out) is the Plustek scanners. I've had my eyes on Plustek Opticfilm 7500i Ai for a while.

 

[Howard Neill]

The Canon Canoscan 9000f sounds like a good option. Has anybody had first hand experience?

 

[Synaesthesia]

The 9000f sounds like a great scanner. I wanted to buy a film scanner then I read this excellent article on film scanning at Imaging Resource:

Frankly, we don't recommend a scanner at all. Figure an hour for every roll of film on your high-end flatbed scanner or even a dedicated 35mm scanner and, well, you retired too late. If the tedium doesn't kill you, something else will.

And scanning software is so difficult to use, you'll beg to be put out of your misery.

Also consider sending your negatives/slides to scancafe - a cheap and excellent scanning service.

 

[undesign]

Agreed with above, either have it done by someone specializing in scanning (probably going to cost you serious $$$$) or just scan a few select one. The latter is what I do, it's a PITA to scan properly, edit the result etc. etc.

 

[dayav07]

Are you going to back up your pics on to another pc? into the cloud?
What happens when there is a fire/water damage, theft or data corruption?

I currently store them on a Seagate 300GB external.. I do backups onto a 2.5" USB powered drive (500GB) often

 

[koffiejunkie]

I agree that it's a major hassle. But I tend to do one or two frames at a time while I'm busy with other stuff on my computer, so I'm not dedicating hours and hours to it. The other reason I'm doing it myself is basically to practise on my amateurish pix from my younger years so that I know more or less how to go about it with reasonable efficiency when I tackle my dad's Slides library. He won't agree to have his slides sent to a 3rd party, and I don't blame him.

 

[BigAl-sa]

Biggest PITA is cleaning before you scan (any modern 3600+ ppi scanner capable of film/slide scans should be good enough).

Best storage medium is the film/slide itself - beats any digital medium as you don't have to worry about obsolescence

 

[koffiejunkie]

Biggest PITA is cleaning before you scan

How do you recommend clean them?

 

[BigAl-sa]

How do you recommend clean them?

What I've found works best is:
* compressed air (such as Dust Off), but really do be careful to keep the tin vertical as gunk gets ejected if it's angled;
* a lens pen to clean finger marks;
* iso-propyl alcohol + lens tissue to clean the really bad stuff;
* the #1 though is to make sure the scanner is clean, the glass as well as the cover to the light in the hood. This is one of the reasons why I don't like film scanners - you can't clean the lamps or the detectors.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Thanks BigAl. My film have all been kept in their plastic sleeves since I got each one, so they are reasonably clean, except for some dust and the odd finger mark.

 

[DotKomrade]

I found about 50 or 60 old rolls that my parents took when they were younger people and after phoning around the best price I got was R2.50 per picture. Then I called my local fotofirst and they scanned everything in for R10 per roll. Really good quality too - about 8Mb per pic...