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Archive 2022 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos

  
 
billsamuels
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


Hey,
My 95 year old cousin died and she was the family historian but she never told me she had boxes of old family photos, some dating back to the earliest years of photography. I'm very happy I found them before they accidentally got thrown out and she was real good at writing names on the back because while I recognize the names, I have no idea who a lot of these people are by their faces because I've never seen photos. There are literately hundreds of photos, mostly B&W.
I would like to scan them and I have an Epson 550, which is okay, but it's older LED technology and it's slower than constipation, one photo at a time. The scans aren't great either! I'm hoping someone will know of a really good quality scanner, especially for B&W and older photos, and one that is quick! Maybe one that will scan a group of photos together and then let me name each one separate as separate photos so I can include the names of each in the photo name? It can be a Canon or another Epson, or another brand, and if they can also do older color slides (I'd like to do my collection of Kodachrome slides as well), that would be awsome! I know that could be a difficult problem because DRUM Scanner are best for this, but they don't make DRUM Scanners anymore. But we have to work with what is made today.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
Bill



Nov 19, 2022 at 02:11 PM
Norm Shapiro
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


i have used the Epson V700 scanner and it will do a good job on prints. V850 is the current version.


Nov 19, 2022 at 10:42 PM
justashooter
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


With the resolution of digital cameras, and for 35mm (or similar sized) slides and negatives I would consider an adapter attached to your digital camera to make "scans". One example is this Nikon adapter.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1357884-REG/nikon_27192_es_2_film_digitalizing_adapet.html/?ap=y&ap=y&smp=y&smp=y&lsft=BI%3A514&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIj5nKzPS7-wIVpMiUCR16zg2BEAQYAyABEgICc_D_BwE



Nov 19, 2022 at 11:28 PM
Norm Shapiro
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


More on your question. I worked at a newspaper for many years. Almost everyday we had to scan in prints, b&w and color. Using Vuescan software and a good Epson will do your job. You can prescan several photos at one time (several on the glass) then go back select each one, adjust settings for a good scan, scan, then save each one as a unique file.

What justashooter was talking about is for film. The V850 Epson also does a decent job with film, not as good as a dedicated film scanner, but good ones are very very expensive.

If you can find an older Epson V700 or so they would also be fine for your purpose.



Nov 20, 2022 at 04:32 PM
jeffbuzz
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


If you're scanning hundreds (thousands?), a flatbed scanner is just not optimal. You will be spending a crazy amount of time setting up and processing each set. Get a sheet fed batch scanner or consider just sending the whole lot out to a service. There are lots of places that do high volume film and print scanning. If you really want to DIY, it looks like the Epson FastFoto FF-680W has gotten decent reviews.


Nov 20, 2022 at 07:50 PM
billsamuels
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos




justashooter wrote:
With the resolution of digital cameras, and for 35mm (or similar sized) slides and negatives I would consider an adapter attached to your digital camera to make "scans". One example is this Nikon adapter.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1357884-REG/nikon_27192_es_2_film_digitalizing_adapet.html/?ap=y&ap=y&smp=y&smp=y&lsft=BI%3A514&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIj5nKzPS7-wIVpMiUCR16zg2BEAQYAyABEgICc_D_BwE


Thanks for the idea. I have mostly old prints of different sizes so I dont think this would work, but it would solve my huge slide problem. Funny enough, I don't own a Nikon camera (all Canon's), but I do have a Nikon 120mm Macro lens with a Nikon to Canon adapter, but it's not on their list of lenses I could use with this adapter. I did create my own adapter situation for slides using a 90mm Macro Tamron and it works real well, but it's very very slow because I have to set up each slide onto a a platform. It creates nice photos, but very slow. I'm wondering about these 8mm projector to DVD machines that also convert photos and slides? do you know how well these work?



Nov 20, 2022 at 11:36 PM
billsamuels
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos




Norm Shapiro wrote:
i have used the Epson V700 scanner and it will do a good job on prints. V850 is the current version.


I'm trying to figure out the difference between the V850 ($1299) and the V600($299) because when I compare the two side by side, they seem identical on resolution and bit depth, and nearly everything else. Does anyone know why the Epson V850 is so much more expensive?
Also, how are the Canon scanners?



Nov 21, 2022 at 11:07 AM
chez
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


billsamuels wrote:
I'm trying to figure out the difference between the V850 ($1299) and the V600($299) because when I compare the two side by side, they seem identical on resolution and bit depth, and nearly everything else. Does anyone know why the Epson V850 is so much more expensive?
Also, how are the Canon scanners?


If you are going to just use the scanner to scan photos, I really don't think there is much of a difference between the two. I'd just use the v600. If you also want to scan slides, the v850 would give you better results with a better dmax and better dust removal.



Nov 21, 2022 at 11:32 AM
snegron7
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


I scanned several thousand slides on an old Epson V600. I also scanned tons of slides using a Nikon ES-1 slide copier attachment on a macro lens (Olympus 30mm f3.5 Macro mounted on a Panasonic GX85). I find that the quality of the copies I get is about the same using either method. Using the camera with macro lens is super quick comoared to scanning.

p s. The reason I went with the Olympus macro lens on a Panasonic micro four thirds body was because it was the least expensive option; I already had the GX85, so all I needed to do was to buy a standard focal length macro lens.



Nov 22, 2022 at 08:06 PM
justashooter
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


I was just using the Nikon as an example. There are third party devices also. As for as prints, you could set up a copy table with speed lights and copy all your prints with a digital camera.


Nov 23, 2022 at 03:27 PM
chez
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


snegron7 wrote:
I scanned several thousand slides on an old Epson V600. I also scanned tons of slides using a Nikon ES-1 slide copier attachment on a macro lens (Olympus 30mm f3.5 Macro mounted on a Panasonic GX85). I find that the quality of the copies I get is about the same using either method. Using the camera with macro lens is super quick comoared to scanning.



The biggest difference between using the Epson scanner and a camera to do your scanning is you have to always be there with the camera whereas with the Epson scanner you can setup the scanner with 12 slides and walk away and do something else while it is scanning. The Epson might be slower, but you don't have to be present as it is scanning. Both processes are very boring but with the Epson, you are not tied down.



Nov 23, 2022 at 05:56 PM
snegron7
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos




chez wrote:
The biggest difference between using the Epson scanner and a camera to do your scanning is you have to always be there with the camera whereas with the Epson scanner you can setup the scanner with 12 slides and walk away and do something else while it is scanning. The Epson might be slower, but you don't have to be present as it is scanning. Both processes are very boring but with the Epson, you are not tied down.


Having scanned thousands of slides in the past five years, I prefer the camera method. When doing larger jobs, I do blocks of one hour at a time. In that one hour, I do around 400 slides.



Nov 24, 2022 at 07:16 AM
RedWhiteandRed
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


Slides -

Nikon Coolscan 5000 with the auto-feeder.

Prints -

Epson flatbed - the V600

And - personal commitment.



Dec 19, 2022 at 07:37 AM
Gregory Edge
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


I just went through this when my Dad passed this May. 7 or 8 years ago I scanned all his slides. We had decided instead of a wake where everyone stands around crying and offering to help you with anything you need we would hold a celebration of life several months later.

I wanted to put a slideshow together celebrating my fathers life of 82 years. I had 5 months to find enough photos to represent his life. I pulled my Nikon scanner out and set about scanning negatives. I started to do the math and there was no way I would get everything scanned in time. I wanted to scan all Mom and Dad's photos so I can give my other family members stuff.

I bought a ScanSnap ix1600 for scanning documents and decided to try scanning prints with it using Vuescan. It worked excellent. I was able to scan stuff quickly and with decent resolution. Are those scans going to be good enough to win a contest? of course not. Are they good enough to show on a 55" TV or even projected on a 100" screen? yes. Many of these old snapshots were not exposed properly to begin with but for memories they are perfect.

I was able to scan them into tiffs and actually clean them up in Capture One. Pretty amazing.




Dec 23, 2022 at 01:01 AM
pwschladen
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Need decent Photo Scanner for Lots of Photos


I bought an Epson FastFoto FF-680W before Christmas and am very pleased with it.
You can stack about 36 4x6 prints in it at a time and you can choose to have it scan the back as well to capture the captions.
Will work will bigger prints and documents too. There are decent enhancement options as well - remove red eye, fix faded colours etc. but you can keep the unmolested scans too.

I am sure with time and effort you can do much better with a good flatbed, vuescan and your favourite editing software.

FastFoto is just that though - pretty fast. My plan is to catalogue all those boxes and perhaps go back to redo some of the best or most treasured photos and maybe the negatives for a do over.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=epson%20fastfoto%20ff-680w&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ps



Feb 17, 2023 at 09:40 PM





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