A family photo achival project - what do I need?

[Sue De Nimes]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

This is the outfit I use. Good price and good quality. Not "over night fast" but 100x faster than if you did this yourself
http://www.scancafe.com/pricing

Thanks.

I am in the UK so any recommendations for UK based services will be gratefully received. The problem I am finding is I have a lot of 120 film which seems to be a LOT more expensive to scan.

These guys come up high on Google.

http://www.iphotoscanning.co.uk/phot...negatives.html

They charge £1.99 per frame of 120 film. (That is the bulk price down from £2.99). I would say the bulk of the photos I want from the 70s and 80s are going to be 120. Even if there are just 1000 of them that means £2000 to scan. In US terms that is just over $3000!

Funnily enough Scancafe would be cheaper to use if I paid to ship from the UK to the US! I might drop them an email and see if they would deal with a UK customer. Pricing for this sort of work just seems so much better in the US

[dlegend]

Keep in mind, if you do scan them in by yourself you don't have to retouch every photo. If you do scan them in yourself I would scan them all in and then go through and pick out what you want to edit first, second, etc. and go from there.

[acearchie]

Originally Posted by Sue De Nimes

They charge £1.99 per frame of 120 film. (That is the bulk price down from £2.99). I would say the bulk of the photos I want from the 70s and 80s are going to be 120. Even if there are just 1000 of them that means £2000 to scan. In US terms that is just over $3000!

Funnily enough Scancafe would be cheaper to use if I paid to ship from the UK to the US! I might drop them an email and see if they would deal with a UK customer. Pricing for this sort of work just seems so much better in the US

Did you have a look at the 8800f that I have? One thing that you may not have considered is the enjoyment you may get from scanning the photo's in your self. I always really enjoy scanning in my rolls and retouching but I suppose I am only ever doing 12 or 24 at most at a time. But then, like you have said, you are not going to attempt to do it in one sitting and therefore might find some joy in the project especially if you are reliving your youth or your parents youth!

[Sue De Nimes]

Yes, I looked at it. From what I can make out the Epson scanners seem to be a better bet.

I am considering the v700 if I go down that road.

EDIT : I have been looking online and I see that the film I think we have a lot of is 110 not 120.

Certainly these films looked like this :



Does that have an impact on what I do? From what I can see online these sort of film will not give great results whatever I do. Is this something I should just scan myself or will I get a much better result from a scanning company. Also, will I get a better result scanning the negative or scanning a print?

[carlgo]

deleted by me. Let me rethink this...

[Sue De Nimes]

I have a Samsung SCX-4825FN - click for the Samsung web page.

Will the scanner in that be any use for this project?

[Designer Dale]

Originally Posted by Sue De Nimes

I have a Samsung SCX-4825FN - click for the Samsung web page.

Will the scanner in that be any use for this project?

Look for the terms "optical" and "effective or interpolated" when deciding on a scanner. Optical resolution is the max that the hardware can produce while effective is that signal run through a digital signal amplifier. The amplified signal is never as clean as the optical one.

I did a project similar to this as a design intern. I took an artist's slide portfolio and converted it into a searchable CD. I used a Nikon Coolscan for the slides and the results were great.

All in one scanners are ok for general use but they are lacking for specialized use like this. I have a wide format Epson 1400 printer and an Epson multi function. Both will print the cd/DVD labels I like to make, but the tray on the multi is so flimsy I've never even thought of using it.

Dale

Btw, 120 film is easy to identify. It's square.

[Sue De Nimes]

I am pretty sure now it is 110 film rather than 120.

[robbieduncan]

Originally Posted by Designer Dale

Btw, 120 film is easy to identify. It's square.

Not necessarily. I've just bought a 645 camera that shoots 6x4.5 cm images on 120 film. And 6x7 was also popular.

[Designer Dale]

Originally Posted by robbieduncan

Not necessarily. I've just bought a 645 camera that shoots 6x4.5 cm images on 120 film. And 6x7 was also popular.

The width of the film may be the same, but 120 is still considered a square format. A 12 exposure 120 roll won't be the same length as a 12 exposure 645 roll. You could shoot a square frame format on 35mm film, but the result wouldn't be called a 35.

If you ordered a film holder for your 645 you wouldn't want to call it a 120. You would get a square one in the mail.

Dale

[carlgo]

Ok, rethought for better or worse...I have been through this and went through the same processes of wondering what to do. Finally got a family photo book printed (through Aperture) and it is great.

The problem is that you have found yourself to be responsible for saving all your family history and this is going to be expensive and time-consuming. Since your work may go down to many following generations, you want it to be good and not have your great-great-great grandchildren cursing you for sloppy work!

1. You have thousands of slides in 35mm and 110?

It is essential to go through them and brutally throw out the bad ones. Remember, future generations do not want to see 500 photos of Aunt Mary. A few that show her essence, a depiction of her life, is right. More photos than that and their eyes will glaze over.

2. Send out the keepers to ScanCafe or whoever. It is not worth scanning small format yourself!!!! I went for the high quality scan, but not the dust removal, etc. as you have to do so much correction on your computer anyway.

3. Every slide scan you keep to publish will need work. Aperture, Lightroom, Elements, etc are enough. You do not need Photoshop for this unless you are going well beyond normal restoration. I happen to have Aperture and it can do what photos need: cropping, straightening, retouching, saturation, color correction, sharpening, contrast...and the clone option works to remove creases, fix up borders and replace deteriorating. It also keeps a master photo in case you simply need to start over.

One nice thing about Aperture is that it preserves the original, so even if you make a mistake you can go back.

4. If you do have hundreds of 120 film/negatives, that is a problem financially. It will cost hundreds or thousands to send them out. These 120 or larger negatives/slides can be done on a quality flatbed. Bear in mind that nothing less than a V700 will do for slides and negatives! Don't think anything else will work well at all.

It is math at this point. If you have enough scans to do, then maybe find a used one and then resell it.

Just understand that you really need to send out 35, but you can do 120 at home. Cheapo 35mm scanners...no.

If you also have prints to scan, then the V500s and the like are great at reflective scanning and serve your general non-photo scanning needs as well.

Bear in mind that you cannot always make a bad photo perfect at all, just simply as good as it can be. As you do this, you get better at it and at making decisions about what is worth doing. Of course you will come across a few priceless old photos that you work on for hours because they are worth it.

As an end note, you will probably find that the really old photos, taken prior to the days of 35mm, are better. Photography was the mostly the avocation of professionals and dedicated amateurs. Each photo cost money, sometimes a lot of money, and they did not take 500 photos of a dog laying on its back. Almost all of the really old photos are keepers whereas only a small percentage of the small format photos are. And digital...probably a .05% keeper rate overall.

[Sue De Nimes]

It is 110 film I actually have. I spoke with Epson and they told me today NONE of their scanners will do 110 negatives.

[monokakata]

I'd like to add something about documentation.

Not long ago I found a box of negatives from when my folks were into photography -- this would have been in the fifties. The same box had many prints. Everybody who could help is dead. I have other family photographs, nineteenth century ones, with no possibility of learning who the people are. None.

So consider making it a priority to collect as much information about those photographs as you can. Something as simple as a voice recorder would work -- have people look at the images and talk about them. If you can use a little camcorder, even better.

But get something about them. Otherwise you could have a fine collection of images with no IDs and stories to go along with them.

And that would be a pity. Take it from me.

[robbieduncan]

Originally Posted by Designer Dale

The width of the film may be the same, but 120 is still considered a square format. A 12 exposure 120 roll won't be the same length as a 12 exposure 645 roll. You could shoot a square frame format on 35mm film, but the result wouldn't be called a 35.

If you ordered a film holder for your 645 you wouldn't want to call it a 120. You would get a square one in the mail.

Dale

Lets not take this way off topic (my fault, not yours). But there is no such thing as 12 exposure 120 film. All 120 film is the same length. You get more or less exposures depending on the format shot on it. So with the camera I Have you get 16 shots on a standard 120 film.

[Sue De Nimes]

OK - I got myself a Canon 9000F and I have started my scanning project.

I have a load of 110 negatives which I can scan in using a holder I managed to get my hands on. I have a load of 35mm negatives and also some 126 instamatic negatives.

I have the default Canon scanning software and also Silverfast 8 SE which came with it. The results on some of the small format stuff is actually OK - my expectations were pretty low.

I have been considering getting Vuescan - how good is the infrared correction on that compared to the other software?

[philjo]

I am planning a similar project during the winter.
I have got over 5000 35m B&W negatives which are all filed in albums and approx 3000 medium format negatives as well. These were all taken by my grandfather who had his own darkroom so he got through a lot of rolls of B&W film.

I have got A4 proof sheets with thumbnails of each frame on the roll so can hopefully reduce the number I need to scan but I might just go through them all and then do a high-res version of the ones I want to keep for enlargements.

I also have a load of 110 and 126 colour negatives that I took when I was younger.

My Epson flatbed scanner will probably do for the medium format but need a dedicated 35mm scanner for the 35mm negatives. I think the 126 ones should fit in the 35mm holders.
I did ask a couple of quotes for getting a firm to scan them for me but it was over £1 per medium format neg so total costs were approaching £5000 - which is not an option.

I'm currently looking at the Plustek models, unless I can nab a Minolta or Nikon one from ebay.

Regarding file names, I am planning to put the scans from each album into a separate folder using the frame numbers as the file name.
I'll then import them all into lightroom 4.2 which is running on my mac mini & apply keywording/collections to the images there.

[snberk103]

Originally Posted by Sue De Nimes

...
I have been considering getting Vuescan - how good is the infrared correction on that compared to the other software?

As you have probably figured out by now, Vuescan is a very powerful piece of software, that can be very frustrating to use because it has so many options for optimizing the scans. Just slog through the documentation, and make some time to scan a negative at different settings to see what works best. There is, iirc, the ability to save 'presets' so that you can save a scanning setup for a particular kind of film.

Keyword your photos as you import them into Aperture, and create albums as you go. That is to say... take the time to organize your images as you go, instead of waiting until they are all scanned in. Sometimes the container the film was in will give you clues about the origin of the images. Capture that info while it is still fresh in your mind. imho....

Make sure you are backing up as you go. Slow & cheap external hard drives are all you need.

Good Luck.

[joelk2]

not sure if this company would be of any use?

http://www.wescanphotos.co.uk/

prices seem alot cheaper than you quoted.