Need to digitise about 10,000+ photos.....help!

[beanbag]

So I've decided to take on the arduous task of digitising and backing up pretty much the entire history of our family since the camera was invented.

It started off with doing a "This is your life" book for my Dad (in progress), but I've just received another packet of irrelevant photos but they are all stunning so I've decided to undertake this personal project.

I've got 35mm reels, photos, everything arriving from everywhere and and I expect when I visit Colombia to see my family there next year, I'll have a suitcase full of 35mm film!!!

My plan is to preserve as much as I can for myself, kids and future generations however my HP Scanjet 4070 simply isn't going to cut the mustard.

So....I need a good scanner. Nothing that is overpriced but I'm sure I can buy something decent for £120 or so. The key is that is must have good batch scanning software. I'll probably buy a dedicated 35mm film scanner later but for now I want to concentrate on the printed photos.

What would be a good suggestion for a scanner? I'd like to get something this weekend as my Scanjet 4070 is sloooow and PS4 is not an ideal app for batch photo scanning!

Cheers!

P.S. Once I've got enough scanned and restored, I'll put much of it on-line so I'll let you know the catalog website when it's ready.

[rottie102]

beanbag said:

P.S. Once I've got enough scanned and restored, I'll put much of it on-line so I'll let you know the catalog website when it's ready.

10k of them??? Are you one those people that make the whole family suffer going through hours of videos and pictures after each holidays?

[hairykrishna]

10,000 of them? You're best off shelling out a bit more for a scanner that has a sheet feeder unless you value your time very, very low!

[beanbag]

rottie102 said:

beanbag said:

P.S. Once I've got enough scanned and restored, I'll put much of it on-line so I'll let you know the catalog website when it's ready.

10k of them??? Are you one those people that make the whole family suffer going through hours of videos and pictures after each holidays?

Obviously it's an estimate, but I already have 400 from my mother and that's just a envelope. In the loft there are 4 large boxes of printed photos plus another box of mixed up 35mm. Much of it is probably duplicate but there is also some completely unknown stuff.

In addition, my grandmother has a large suitcase of photos I'm working out how to get to Vienna from Scotland and my mother-in-law has boxes of photos to share!

Then you have to consider my mother had nine siblings and my grandmother had 6 of her own. There are literally thousands in Colombia!!!! Obviously I can't take it all but I'm going to try and rescue as much as I can as a lot of it is degrading and falling apart...

[beanbag]

hairykrishna said:

10,000 of them? You're best off shelling out a bit more for a scanner that has a sheet feeder unless you value your time very, very low!

This is exactly what I was thinking.....but all the sheet feeder scanners I've read about seem to score very low. (Unless somebody can suggest a good one?)

[beanbag]

Well, after a little playing about I found out my OSX isn't so bad after all. Completely without reason, HP reasons it's ok to create OS X 10.6 drivers for my scanner but not Windows 7 drivers.

The upside is I can play 4-6 photos on the scanning plate at once and the software pretty much does the rest for me and creates the individual scans.

So far I've done about 50 in about 2 hours....this could take some time!!

[rottie102]

beanbag said:

Well, after a little playing about I found out my OSX isn't so bad after all. Completely without reason, HP reasons it's ok to create OS X 10.6 drivers for my scanner but not Windows 7 drivers.

The upside is I can play 4-6 photos on the scanning plate at once and the software pretty much does the rest for me and creates the individual scans.

So far I've done about 50 in about 2 hours....this could take some time!!

Get some illegal immigrants from Colombia and open an undercover mini lab in your basement? "Scan for food" type of thing

[tinman0]

This is only 600dpi.

http://www.fujitsu.com/emea/products/scanners/disc...

But i picked up one off ebay for £75 two weeks ago. Haven't tried photos, but for documents it is incredibly fast. I'll run up some photos now, as i've got a few hundred to do myself.