Good quality scanner for scanning lots of photos

[roger6106]

I want to get a high-quality scanner to quickly and easily scan lots of old pictures. I would prefer to not have to do any photo editing after the pictures are scanned (rotating, cropping, color adjustment, etc.).

What is a scanner that will allow me to quickly scan lots of photos? Does the Image Capture program under Applications work well for bulk photo scanning?

 

[Blue Velvet]

What is your budget? How many pictures do you need to scan?

I'm quite pleased with the quality of my CanoScan 8800F given the price. Image Capture is usually a stand-in when provided software doesn't exist or work that well.

 

[roger6106]

I'd like to spend around $200, maybe up to $300. I'd be scanning a few hundred old pictures that I'd like to get into my iPhoto library.

I am also considering scanning photos for other people who want their pictures transferred to a computer, so I may end up doing a lot more.

I looked at the CanoScan 8800F, and it seems that it's made for scanning film/negatives. Does it work well scanning printed photos? Is it easy to pick up a photo from the tray without smudging the glass? Do you use it on Leopard? It seems that the provided software is only made to work on Mac OSX 10.2.8 through 10.4.x. Does it work on Leopard?

 

[Blue Velvet]

I like Canon peripherals because I've never had a problem with drivers and software for the Mac. The 8800F is about $200 or so, doesn't need warming up because it has an LED light source. It also has a multiscan mode:

There's also a multiscan mode that lets you put more than one photo on the flatbed, and scan each one to a separate file with a single scan command.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2329069,00.asp

You can customise the settings for multiscanning so it automatically crops and colour corrects if you want. I haven't even used half of the features of this machine yet. Every review I've read is impressed with the quality.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/c...categoryid=120&modelid=15561#ModelFeaturesAct

It works with Leopard fine. I'm running 10.5.5. The slide holders are optional; it's not a dedicated film scanner. It's a flatbed scanner aimed at mid-range (prosumer) photographers, hence the inclusion of the negative carriers and so forth. Dedicated fim scanners are usually more expensive and are usually a different shape.

I'm a print designer and bought mine to archive some old illustration work for later reworking; so quality was important as well as the ability to scan in 16 bit mode. I can't fault it for the results which are easily up to the quality of some drum scans of other work which were done 7-8 years ago.

All flat-bed scanners have glass plates. I keep a spray bottle of glass cleaner handy or you could wear a pair of cotton gloves if you're doing huge batches and want to avoid smearing.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

 

[bartelby]

I'm also a canon fan. I was given a lide80 that just works great. I've had 3 HP scanners all crap out after a year so I avoid them now.

 

[roger6106]

Thanks. I'll look into the CanoScan 8800F some more. So far I like what I've seen.

 

[hdsalinas]

Months ago I was in the same situation.

I cant believe that there is on simple photo scanner that would automatically scan a bunch of photographs.

I wanted my images to have the same size, so what I did was to set up my camera on a tripod aim it down my desk, add a couple of lamps, set a way to secure my paper photographs and then I just took pictures of pictures.

This was pretty fast. I just had to swap images take two shots of each and the place another one.

I am very happy with the results. All of the images had the same size. I ad to do some minor touch up in photoshop and was even able to get some colors back. It may not be as good as scanning them but it is really fast.

I also like to register dates of events as much as possible. I found that most images had dates etched on them and opthers I was able to determine the year and even the month they were taken and edit this info in iphoto.

Hope it helps you out.