Scanning negatives and photographs

[Adam43]

A few years ago I embarked on project to scan old photos and negatives to add to the digital library. I used simple flatbed scanner and got decent results that I was happy about. I had settled on resolution and other settings for both photos and negatives.

I went for completeness, scanning everything not just the best. It was time consuming and eventually it got lower priority as other things in life got in the way.

However recently I had need to find one of these old photographs that I had scanned and was reminded that I still had others to do.

I'm wondering if I could invest in some more up to date hardware and software to make the job easier.

Is there a "bulk" scanner for photographs and negatives that anyone here can recommend? I'd like to scan several at once and simply save them as individual files to assess and catalogue later. Or even one that might add some location and date data during the scan?

[VIVA GT]

I have a fairly old drivers only available up to Windows XP) flatbed scanner that also has a lightbox which enables me to scan 35mm slides or negatives. To get any decent quality for the finished article I have to scan each slide one at a time (I've never tried negatives) even though it loads three into the lightbox. I did try scanning all three at once, then editing each individual slide, but the resolution was only good enough to use the pictures about twice normal size! This was also no helped by the original film being quite grainy anyway as it was a high ASA rating so I could get enough light in at a fast shutter speed on a typical gloomy British race meeting day!

[Samoan Attorney]

Originally Posted by Adam43

A few years ago I embarked on project to scan old photos and negatives to add to the digital library. I used simple flatbed scanner and got decent results that I was happy about. I had settled on resolution and other settings for both photos and negatives.

I went for completeness, scanning everything not just the best. It was time consuming and eventually it got lower priority as other things in life got in the way.

However recently I had need to find one of these old photographs that I had scanned and was reminded that I still had others to do.

I'm wondering if I could invest in some more up to date hardware and software to make the job easier.

Is there a "bulk" scanner for photographs and negatives that anyone here can recommend? I'd like to scan several at once and simply save them as individual files to assess and catalogue later. Or even one that might add some location and date data during the scan?

Adam

I have been on a major scanning exercise since recently reacquiring my work from 95-97. So far I have managed over 14,000 slides in the past 6 months, all high resolution TIFFs and I have even made some good sales of some of this work.

I use a flatbed, Epson V850 PRO and Silverfast software, upgrading the program bundled with the scanner to the top level available. I am able to scan in batches of 12 so can leave the scanner going while getting on with other work.

I will admit that the software was almost impossible to use at first, despite the wild claims of its German authors. I kept plugging away and signed up for a course on Lynda.com, taking advantage of their 30 day free trial. I have now managed to cobble together something that works for me and is good enough quality to print DPS in books.

One major advantage of this workflow is the dust and scratch removal feature utilising the infra red channel of the scanner, saves hours of effort in Photoshop and Lightroom, which, if you are on a deadline, is a life saver. I use the latter program to keyword and caption rather than the clunky Silverfast HDR Studio.

Others will say that they have the answer and I am sure there is no definitive solution, just this works for me and the clients seem happy and are willing to pay. An alternative scanner might be found in the Plustek range, I have one but stopped using it after discovering occasional artefacts at extreme high resolution, this may have been due to operator error rather than a fault with the machine. By this time I had purchased the V850 and worked out how to use it.

Recently an alternative solution has emerged using high end digital cameras to do the scanning, there is a very good book and set of videos here http://thedambook.com/ - when I first looked at this the main drawback was the dust and scratch removal feature being absent. Silverfast has now released this plug-in that takes care of that http://www.picture-plugins.com/

OK enough from me.