Experience digitizing photos, at home or outsourced

[georgicus]

I'm finally getting to a project I put off before FIRE -- digitizing approx 15 years of photos from the film era.

I've gotten a copy stand set up, and a scanner, too.  I get about the same results with each scanning photographs (prints) -- about 800 so far -- good enough for a digital picture frame, but not good enough to print.  My understanding is that you really need to start with the negatives when you have them.

Has anyone had good experience sending your negatives out to Scancafe or its ilk?

[DaveR]

I've had good results at home, but the key was a full frame DSLR and quality lenses. Job perks, but you might be able to borrow, or definitely rent gear for decent rates. Depending on number of photos, that may be a better route than sending them out.

Negatives will give you better results (more control), since a print has it's focus, exposure, color issues, etc. to adjust.

I haven't sent anything out in quite a while for digitizing. I did a few years ago to a couple of local shops as a test and wasn't thrilled with the results. After a bit of a learning curve, I got much better results myself.

[exmmmer]

I'm finally getting to a project I put off before FIRE -- digitizing approx 15 years of photos from the film era.

I've gotten a copy stand set up, and a scanner, too.  I get about the same results with each scanning photographs (prints) -- about 800 so far -- good enough for a digital picture frame, but not good enough to print.  My understanding is that you really need to start with the negatives when you have them.

Has anyone had good experience sending your negatives out to Scancafe or its ilk?

When we downsized several years ago we digitized all paper, photos, and memorabilia. The larger, bulkier items we just took photos. The actual photo prints we scanned in using the Fujitsu ScanSnap. After we were done, we sold it and recouped most of our investment.

For the slides I combined my small collection with my father's larger collection and we shipped them off to ScanCafe. We were generally pleased with the results!

[Spork]

What DPI are you scanning?  More is better (up to a point anyway).  Minimally you want 300 DPI for photos.  More if you have the negative or a slide.  (And by more, I mean "a lot more").

[georgicus]

With the scanner, 600 dpi.  (For a while I cranked it up to 1200 but did not notice any improvement.)

With the copy stand, I am using a Samsung NX30 to take 20M-pixel photos, using bracketing mode to take 3 shots of each original (slightly different exposures) and I just pick the one that looks best.  (Using shutter priority of 0.5 second, which puts the aperture at f/6-12.  This seems to work the best for capturing detail.)

The quality (scanner vs. camera) comes out the same, despite the theoretically doubled resolution with the camera. 

Camera advantages:
-- much, much faster
-- easy adjustment on the rare occasion I need to boost exposure
-- press one button per print (scanner needs 2)

Scanner advantages:
-- it gets brightness right more often
-- I don't have to take breaks to recharge

So far, so good.  So why am I thinking of sending stuff out?  When I take a very close look at the photo vs. the file, I can always find details that did not get captured by the camera or the scanner, even at their highest settings.  I have at least a couple hundred photos for which I'd like to have the best copy possible, which should be achievable from the negatives scanned at 3000-4000 dpi, which is the resolution that most of the services advertise.

[briesas]

https://m.youtube.com/#/user/alctsce

Good resources here, especially under the 'preservation' section.

[georgicus]

Yes, thanks for the link.  Lots of good stuff.