Large scanning project

[carlos_rodriguez3]

<p>Just to share with you:</p>

<p>I already have thumbnail scans from all my negatives (14,000 pictures). I also have all my prints scanned, including 2000 old pirnts ranging from 1910 to 1990.</p>

<p>And now, I am in the process of scanning all my negatives and slides in high resolution. I calculate they will be around 6000 scans. I am using a Epson 4490 which is not optimal, but it gives me nice resuls. The project will take me between 8 months to 1 and a half years, depending on time availbable and current state of negatives. I can only work on this two or three hours a day, so the process will take time.</p>

<p>I am color correcting some of them, changing exposure and saving to TIFFs. But I try to do this in batches and getting the best scans I can but not extending too much the process geting into particular pictures problems. Some of the negatvies are severaly damaged, but I still have the print scan. In some cases the print scan is in better shape than the negatives. This happened because I didnt care much for negatives before 2000. After 2000 I cleaned and preserved them in archival pages. The quantity of dust is in most cases nanegable. I am not using ICE for any picture. I plan to apply some ICE to just a few extrememly important pictures, since it takes around 5 mintues to complete one picture. I dont apply unsharp mask to any of them. I did some test and sharpening is perfectly controllable in PS</p>

<p>What can I say, the experience is amazing. I have already rediscovered some negatives which I didnt knew I had. By doing this I am recreating my family history of 15 years from 1990 to 2005.There is something magic about having all this negatives in physical form. It is incredible how even kids are fascinated by slides, considering most young adulsts dont know what they are, LOL.</p>

<p>Has anyone done this kind of project before? I mean doing all their negatives in one run? Any recomendations?</p>

<p> </p>

[bgelfand]

<p>Use a decent DAM (Digital Asset Manager) to catalog all your scans. You need something that will allow you to key word your images to be able to find them quickly. Be sure your naming convention will allow you to associate a scan with the original negative, so can find the negative quickly either for further scanning or even printing.</p>

<p>Be sure to back up you scans and catalog - multiple times - and store at least one back up off site to guard against fire or flood.</p>

[ljwest]

<p>I've not done this, but I keep thinking I need to. I've got a couple office boxes full of slides, countless other negatives, etc. all going back 50 years and more, from parents and myself when I was younger.</p>

<p>I wonder which would be easier for me:</p>

 

<ul>

<li>Just scanning everything to a high resolution at one shot, or</li>

<li>scanning "thumbnails" of perhaps 1152x768 pixels in size (to preserve the 3:2 aspect ratio), then reviewing the thumbnails and doing a high res scan of only the ones we really want.</li>

</ul>

<p>The former would mean only one shot for each neg/slide, but the latter would likely go much faster, especially if I did only a minimal cleaning/correction of the scan. My flatbed scanner takes quite a bit of time to do a really good scan of a negative or slide, and I figure at the lower resolution, that would go considerably faster. Then I could take the time to do a better job on the real gems in the collection. We weren't the best at culling pictures after they were processed, and often, the slides were just loaded into cubes, and the boxes tossed out, so there's lots of chaff in with the wheat...</p>

<p>But I am looking forward to rediscovering old images...</p>

[cricketprints]

<p>I am doing the same project, so far just my negatives then I want to do my family's slides from the 50's-70's and prints dating back 100 years. I own an Agfa d-Lab.1 minilab to do my negatives on and I do use ICE on all of them. It takes me about 3 minutes to do 24 exposures cut in strips of 4 frames. I only do my personal work when I am caught up on customer orders so sometimes I only get a few rolls done a week.<br>

Once your scans are all done, I suggest uploading them to multiple sites and a couple hard drives. I have my own site that I upload to, cricketprints.com, but I also save them on picasa.com. I once used snapfish and shutterfly but they don't let me download my full size image and if I don't buy anything for a year they threaten to delete my account. </p>

[marc_bergman1]

<p>I would suggest you prioritize, prioritized, prioritize.</p>

<p>I have done a similar project using an Epson 4490 and a Nikon Coolscan V.</p>

<p>You have a great start by already scanning all your prints and producing thumbnails of your negatives and slides. I would suggest you use that to plan your approach to this project.</p>

<p>What is your ultimate goal? Is it to produce a family album or a web page? Do you need every image? Can you get by with only 500? I believe most people would rather see a smaller number of interesting images. I would think about how you want to display these images. </p>

<p>Do you have a plan to backup these images? Have you already backed up the work you have done? How are you storing your negatives? I like to use water-proof and fire-proof storage boxes. You can get them at office supply stores.</p>

<p>I would think of this as more of a 3 month project. That way you can narrow your scope. What would you like to achieve in 3 months? What images are most important. I found 3 months at a time was when I needed a break. Take your time to evaluate what you have accomplished. It may be that you or your family want certain pictures so you can emphasize doing those on your next scanning run.</p>

<p>Good luck. It is a tough project but one that is worthwhile in the long run.</p>

 

[JDMvW]

<p>I scanned in nearly 50 years of slides (roughly 35,000 images) and other photographic materials. If I had to do it all over again, I'd pay somebody to do it.<br /> There comes a point where</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I am in slide scanning<br />Stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more,<br />Returning were as tedious as go o'er.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It can be done. It takes patience. It's a good idea to set an older computer doing this while you're working on another one. I have such a set up, back-to-back, and only have to pay attention to the scanner one when it beeps after finishing a batch.<br /> The trouble with only doing part of the corpus was that I discovered, as I got well into the project, that many slides that were "seconds" in the film, turned out with a little post processing to reveal why you had taken them in the first place. Just pulling up shadow detail alone (and it's there, just not visible in projection) often yields new treasures that you thought were just failed shots. If I had started from the start to do just everything it would have been far more efficient than going back to the well over and over again, figuring out what you did scan and what you didn't, etc.</p>

<p>And yeah, do it high-res the first time, and you won't have to go back.</p>

[randall_pukalo]

<p>Kodak Pakon f235 is what you need - massive scanning speed and much much higher quality than an Epson. Look for the Dante Stella article on it. I got one last year, best purchase I made.</p>

[cricketprints]

<p>I agree, the Pakon F235 (or F335) is very nice.</p>

[marc_bergman1]

<p>Here is the Dante Stella article on the Kodak/Pakon F235.</p>

<p>http://www.dantestella.com/technical/f235plus.html</p>