have you guys seen/tried this?!

[HeatherPrins]

for all the old negatives we have

Let ScanCafe do your scanning for you! | Terry White’s Tech Blog

I am going to try it in the fall.

[suzanne]

My only problem with this is that you have to ship your photos to them & then they turn around and ship them India to be scanned. All that shipping makes me nervous. There is no way to replace them once they are lost.

[digigrandma]

I have checked that service out and I've been very tempted for scanning slides. I worry about shipping them, too. I'm going to try first to see if there is a local service so I could hand deliver the slides.

[Mark]

I have used digmypics.com and have been pleased with the results. They are in Arizona, I think, so the slides stay in the US. I have to admit I was VERY nervous shipping my slides and negatives. I did a couple of smaller trial runs to get a feel for how the process went before I sent anything super special. Everything worked out well and I have used them about 5 times now. I could not find a place in Atlanta that provides this service which is surprising. Maybe a business opportunity if things don't work out at the Bank! Oofh. ;-)

[dugarner]

A good friend of mine and I were planning to go into this service a few years ago, when I wasn't teaching as much and had free time. She has the scanner and the attachments, I had the time and tech knowledge. We just never got it started, but I bet there is a serious market for it, if people just know you do it. I bet I could have a full-time scanning business here in my small town. People don't trust the big stores that do it, and now that our local camera store is gone, you'd have to go to CVS, Rite Aid . . . and the people that work there, well, let's just say they aren't the sharpest tools in the shed.

I would be very, very nervous about shipping anything irreplaceable, so I'd rather just do it myself. A scanner with a negative/slide attachment isn't too much anymore, and depending on how many you have, it would probably pay for itself in just a couple batches.

This same friend of mine found some Super 8 films from when she was young---her mother and father were both deceased before she was 16---showing her playing with her mom. She wanted it on DVD and shipped it to just8mm.com, a small place in Longview, Texas, just a couple hours from here. She was a nervous wreck until the movie came back, packed in a box with the DVD and a bag of popcorn with a hand-written note that said, "Enjoy your movie!" She cried and cried, it was so special to her. It was the only video she had of her mom before she got so sick and she didn't even know she had it.

All that to say, it's up to you, the risk vs. reward. I would, without a doubt, try to keep something that precious in the States (or in your country, wherever you are.) And I would for sure ship UPS, FedEx, or another carrier whose business depends on satisfying and keeping repeat customers.

[digigrandma]

Thanks for your input, Mark.

That's a smart idea to do a small batch at a time so if something did happen you wouldn't lose all your slides.

I just googled scan sliding service Minneapolis and found a place in a suburb near me that lets you drop off the slides. Not quite as scary as mailing them off. I would still do as you did, Mark, and, try them out with a small batch first to see what the quality is.

Sarah, several years ago I had all of our Super 8 films transferred to VHS tape. Quite an expensive project, but, I felt it worth ever penny to see the movies of our boys as babies and growing up. Now, I need to get those tapes transferred to DVD for ease of watching on our current DVD players.

I could really spend full time on my projects related to photos and movies and scrapping. It's time consuming and fun, but, overwhelming, at times.

[AllynD]

I have used ScanCafe and was very happy with them. I currently have an order of 500 pictures in Mumbai being scanned.

There was a horrible incident a while back when one of the firms here in the US had a fire and many people lost all their photos-- so I don't really think it matters whether they go to Arizona or Mumbai.

I will let you all know at the end of the month how ScanCafe did on my current order.

It is a good idea not to send any irreplaceable photos anywhere, IMHO.

On the other hand, what if--heaven forbid-- you have a fire in your house?

Edit: P.S. I should add that ScanCafe is very good about tracking and emailing customers at every stage of the process. I can also go online to my account with them, and see exactly where my photos are: enroute to CA, in transit to India, in the queue, being scanned, in quality check process, available online, etc. That is part of why I feel good sending my stuff to them.

[AllynD]

Here is a link to the news about the fire at digmypics:

Photo Scanning Service

Clearly, they went above and beyond to try to help people recover their photos, so they seem like a quality firm.

[dugarner]

Merrilee,

We haven't gotten around to our camcorder to DVD transfers yet. But just8mm is pretty reasonable: 50 feet transferred to DVD is $7.50, 200 feet is $24.00, and so on.

My reservation about sending things out of the country is not that someone else is doing it, I'd just be nervous about it being lost in transit. I have had valuable items lost in the mail, and living where we live, where about 30% of the time mail just isn't delivered, or it's delivered opened, or severely damaged, I'd be nervous.

Accidents happen everywhere, I guess! And those types of accidents show why it's so important to have redundant, off-site backups---the originals and the scanned copies shouldn't really be stored in the same physical location, for that very reason.

I just take some chunks of work to do each summer and figure out what to do with it. I'm the only one in my family interested in preserving any of this for future generations, and since the responsibility is on my shoulders, I can take my time! Everyone enjoys it when it's done, but no one misses it before then.

[Carol Elliott]

I scan my family slides and can also do 35 mm negatives. However, I have a bunch of 110 negatives that I am unable to scan. I've been looking online for places that scan 110 and have been thinking about getting them done at ScanCafe. I've scanned some of the photos I have from my old 110 camera and they just do not scan well at all. The paper they were printed on is not smooth so I get a texture, plus some alot of them have started to deteriorate. It sounds like Lynn has had a good experience. I think I'll try with a small batch to begin with.

[audrey77]

Kodak did mobile scanning at select cities two years ago. The Kodak Scan Van. People were bringing albums from the late 1800s to it!

[lima]

Costco also does slide scanning and other multimedia transfers. I can't find my brochure at the moment, but it did list quite a few services.

[HeatherPrins]

my hubby has checked these guys out and they have never lost an order, ever.