Scanning negatives...

[antiquechic]

I noticed the girl from the Netherlands said something about scanning her old negatives and scrapping pictures from when her children were younger. Since I'm getting bored waiting for my desktop computer to get fixed, I thought I'd pull out all my negatives and scan them but .... I have WAY more than I realized!

Does anyone have experience with maybe a commercially offered service that can scan negatives VERY quickly and turn them into high resolution images and save them to dvds? I did some quick shopping looking for negative scanners and it looks like there are commercial-type ones that are around $1000 but I'm not sure it's worth the personal investment since I no longer shoot film.

Suggestions?

[Britgirl]

NO suggestions really, other than I put off scanning my negatives for ages because there were so many... then I just did a few, and another few, {and I still havent done them all} and I cant tell you the JOY they have brought.
stop seeing them as a whole pile and break them up into little piles.. if you see what I mean!
My faithful negative scanner is indeed slow but fabulous. Go on! have a go

[Kathie]

When we got our latest scanner, it didn't have the negative scanning option, and I was concerned--even tho I haven't used that option on the last 3 scanners that we have had that HAS had it. LOL But after some research, I did see that there is a scanner that does only negatives that was at Costco for $100, and decided that if I ever get around to actually scanning negatives, I would go get one of those and begin scanning a few at a time.

[esther_a]

I'll second what Mel said. I've scanned hundreds and hundreds (only half way)! But I'll load negs, go off and do something else for 15 mins, then load a new batch of negs, etc. Slowly getting through them all.

[KerryMac]

Just last week a friend of mine was at my house raving over this website:

http://www.scancafe.com/

She brought up her account on my computer and showed me a bunch of scans they'd done of her dad's slides and negs. She only had to pay for those that she wanted!
They did a really good job of correcting the colors.

Maybe this will help you

[blkcow]

Do you think you get a better image scanning a negative vs scanning the photo itself??? Just wondering before I get going on my scanning projects???

[sarahorton]

yes, scanning a negative gives you a better image than scanning a photo

i agree with everyone else - just break it up into chunks. a few at a time makes the task seem a lot more palatable

[hawsumb]

Wow, ScanCafe looks great. I love that you only pay for the pics you want scanned. This may be just the incentive I need to pull out my negatives and finally get them scanned.

[digigrandma]

Kerry, thanks for the link to that website.

I have been scanning groups of slides a few at a time. I was just thinking about how I would like to splurge and have some of our hundreds and hundreds of slides scanned by a commercial outfit to save me some time, but, I was really afraid to just go ahead and mail my precious slides to an unknown company. I appreciate knowing that you know someone who actually sent their slides to this company. I liked that you can view the slides online and only order the ones you want because I have found in scanning my own slides that sometimes there are 5-6 slides all of the same scene and I really only need one from that group.

Good luck to all of you organizing your slides. You will be so happy you did it. And, I agree with all of those who say, don't think of the whole amount of slides. Just start, do a few at a time and enjoy the process. I get so much delight from reviewing slides of our children taken 30 years ago! I don't even care if they aren't the greatest pics. I just love seeing what they were wearing, the toys in the background, etc. etc.

[KarenC]

This is totally new to me. Once you scan the negative, how do you get it "positive?"
Thanks for letting me jump in.

[esther_a]

The scanner does that. You tell it you're scanning a negative strip or slide or large format negative instead of a document or photo. These are all options on the scanner. It just does the rest!! Clever little contraption!

[KarenC]

Oh, how neat! Another thing to add to my wish list. Thanks!

[blkcow]

It sounds like magic.....I just love it when the machine knows what to do and how to do it!! :0

[notnufftime]

I've been scanning my negatives in batches. I do an hour at a time that way it doesn't seem a real pain. You would be surprised how much you get done in so little time.

[carollee]

I did a lot of scanning negatives for our family history book and it did 4 at a time but it was a long process. My brother had never seen me so much I was always over at his house using his scanner! But yes, it took quite a while.

[antiquechic]

I looked into more expensive and quicker negative scanners and it looks like the Nikon ones aren't even supported in Vista, so, whatever! I'll just use my Visioneer and do it but I just discovered that I don't have the software loaded on my laptop and my baby broke my DVD player on this thing (grrr) so I'll have to wait to do that TOO until the desktop is fixed. In the meantime, I'll just be stalking the boards and getting inspired and impatient.