Digitizing Old Photos

[gchappel]

This is also a question about what is your time worth?
If you want high quality with either a camera or a scanner I was hard pushed to do more than 1 a minute. Roughly 20 hours to do 1000 pictures. Not worth my time. The company I used years ago is no longer in business.
I have used a company- Legacybox- to digitize old vhs tapes about 6months ago, they did a good job. They do pictures, but I have not used them for pictures.
Pro's will have better equipment and a better workflow than a home user. But they are not cheap- costs about $500 to scan 1000 images at Legacybox.
Time vs money- like so many other things in life.
gary

[1990C4S]

Thanks for all the suggestions and help here. I'm going to start with a good scanner and see how it goes.

[GH85Carrera]

It will go slowly. One reason I kept at it and was my pace, it was under no deadline. And I worked on one the family tree as the images scanned. That can be very addicting. It is cool to see the family tree unfold. I stopped at 8 generations back as there are so many cousins at that point it becomes pointless.

[1990C4S]

Originally Posted by gchappel

This is also a question about what is your time worth?

Not much. I can do this as a background task while I'm at work.

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Another advantage of a flatbed scanner of a camera is slightly curved prints. If the print has a curl to it, it is really hard to photograph. A scanner flattens it against the glass.

Baz your first scan may will be just the original photo, but notice how the white paint is just total white with no defined shape, and the shadows in the interior are just black areas with no detail. That is high contrast. If the print was from an original slide it is very typical of the process, and no scanner could fix it.

yup - the tonal detail in the car's flank is missing - it is all white

dunno if that is the scanning, the print, or the negative