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Film to digital
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Hi all,
Can anyone advise me on what is the best way (and cheapest) to convert my film photos to digital photos. I have several hundred that I need to sort out.
Thanks.
Depends on the quality you need, the quantity of images, and the medium. If prints, any flatbed scanner should do. If negatives/ slides, and the quantity is low’ish, then sending them out to be scanned may be worth it. If you have a lot of negatives/ slides, scanning yourself may be the way to go, with 250/ 300 euro getting you a decent 35mm scanner (Plustek 8100/ 8200, etc), or a decent flatbed scanner that will do up to medium format (Epson V600, etc).
Oh no! I’m already lost. Well, as I travel a lot, both for hobby and work, I have gathered up perhaps a couple of thousands of photos over the years (not that I’m any good at it though.). I’d like to transfer these photos onto digital and I’d like the quality to be fairly decent. I was hoping that there’d be another cheapish way to do it, rather than having to do it myself, as I am hopeless (and probably not patient enough) to scan through thousands of photos. Is there any scanner that allows me just to pile them all into it in large quantities to cut the workload?
Abubilla wrote:
Oh no! I’m already lost. Well, as I travel a lot, both for hobby and work, I have gathered up perhaps a couple of thousands of photos over the years (not that I’m any good at it though.). I’d like to transfer these photos onto digital and I’d like the quality to be fairly decent. I was hoping that there’d be another cheapish way to do it, rather than having to do it myself, as I am hopeless (and probably not patient enough) to scan through thousands of photos. Is there any scanner that allows me just to pile them all into it in large quantities to cut the workload?
Hi Abubilla,
As Damien has already said the answer to your question depends on the quality of the digital file required, how much time you want to spend and how much you wish to spend on the project.
The quality of the digital file you will require depends on what you want to do with it. Screen viewing is one thing while producing any sizeable print of acceptable quality is another.
The amount of time you want to spend is another consideration. Scanning slides, negatives or prints is quite a time consuming operation. Apart from the time spend sorting and choosing what to scan the scanning itself is not fast especially if you are scanning at a very high quality setting. Then there may be quite a bit of tidying up in post processing depending on how well you have stored the material to be scanned. Think dust. :D
If you want to contract someone else to do it there are quite a few options. I put “Scanning film to digital services Ireland” in to Google and it threw up a number of companies who offer this type of service.
I too have thousands of negatives and some slides. I bought an old HP film scanner from a camera club colleague a few years ago. I take a notion every so often and do some scanning. I generally scan at a resolution suitable for screen viewing. I have found it to be good fun and very rewarding when my efforts unearth a gem from bygone days.
If you do decide to look for a used scanner make sure that there is a driver available for whatever operating software you use. There was not a Windows 7 driver available for the scanner I bought. Luckily I had a netbook using XP which I was able to use.
This can be quite a reqarding project but I know of no solution that is easy and cheap.
All the best.
John.
Yeah, I guess your last sentence was the dreaded words I needed to hear – ‘….but I know of no solution that is easy and cheap’. I prefer easy over cheap, as my patients regarding this kind of stuff is fairly low…..and I’m one of those people who just can’t seem to cut any pictures out. Most of my photos will just be for viewing on my computer or printing to standard size. However, there are the occasional ones that I’d like blown up to a decent size for hanging on my wall. I guess for me, the most important thing is to find the easiest solution over the cheapest. I’m okay at sorting out my digital photos when they are on my computer, but trying to do this way is a big of a nightmare for me. Any ideas of what might be the best scanner/program to use to ease things up for me? May take Damien’s advice and invest in a good scanner to make things easier for me. Or are they just all much the same for this kind of stuff?
A lot will depend on what you are scanning, and how many of them there are. What are we talking about here, prints/ negatives/ slides/ 35mm/ medium format..
Sorry, I must have neglected to say that. Nearly all of them are negatives. There are a few slides and prints too, but the negatives are my primarily concern, at least for now. As for the amount, I think it’s about 3000 negatives.
I saw a post recently on face book I think about some project here in ireland, where they scan old negs . If I remember correctly they were trying to build up an archive of life in ireland from photos. I’m not sure if any of your negs fall into this category.
Found it
http://www.galleryofphotography.ie/events/irish_photo_album.html” onclick=”window.open(this.href);return false;looks like the numbers you are talking about fall outside their remit for this , but they may have some advice on bulk scanning if they are doing this as a country wide project.
Cool, if 35mm, you probably have 2 options if you opt to do it yourself.
A dedicated 35mm scanner, like the Plustek 8100/ 8200 will give you scans with a real resolution of about 3300dpi as per anecdotal evidence/ testing I’ve seen. Basically that means you will get 3300 pixels per inch of your media. Your 35mm negatives are 1 inch x 1.5 inches, so basically you’re looking at a real scan resolution of about 3300 x 4950 pixels, which is 16 megapixels give or take. Quality is the upside of this approach, speed of scanning is the downside, as you scan one frame at a time, each frame taking about a minute or so at 3600dpi, if memory serves correctly.
The other option is use a flatbed scanner like an epson v600, which will give you about 1600dpi of real resolution, as per indications/ tests on the web. Basically 1600 x 2400 pixel scans, or scans of about 4 megapixels of real resolution. Ergo, the downside is lower quality, but the upside is speed, with a scanner like the v600 letting you scan 2 strips of 35mm negatives at a time.
You’re looking at about 250/ 300 euro for either scanner, but only your own needs will dictate whether speed or quality is the priority. A final factor to consider is once you are finished scanning, you should be able to resell the scanner, clawing back some of your outlay, meaning going the route of scanning yourself may cost you about 100 euro or maybe a little more in the lost resale value of the scanner, plus whatever time you invest in the scanning itself.
Anyway, hope this helps :)
That’s brilliant advise. Thanks a million for your time and help. I’m prefer lazy when it comes to this type of stuff. My patience has a lot to be desired in these things. However, I think, in the end, quality is more important to me. So may go for the first option you suggested. Thanks again for taking the time out to help me. :wink:
Good luck with the scanning :)
And if moving a plustek on in a few months, let me know, my own backlog of unscanned negatives beckons one day, lol
Will do Damien. :wink:
Sorry redto. Somehow missed your post the last time. Very interesting project. May have a few pics that they may be interested in. Must give them a shout.
Thanks all for your advice and time. :D
rose23 wrote:
The conversion of film photos into digital photo reduce the quality of image and its originality. The difference arise due to pixel conversion.
I’ll still keep my film photos, but as I prefer to use digital photos (for organising purposes), I would like to convert my films into digital. I find it easy to keep everything organised that way. Still haven’t managed to find the time (or funds) to convert yet unfortunately.
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