storing 6 rubbermaid tubs of photo albums?
I am going fulltime and have nowhere to keep them or a place to leave them. Considering using my digital camera and taking a picture of each picture. That way all the pics would be on a small SCANDI...
Forum Discussion
There are several good points made above. As a former pro and having scanned over 10,000 images, here's my take:
1) Scanning is superior to a copy stand and camera - for a number of different reasons.
2) Scanning the negs (if you have them) is superior to scanning the prints... by orders of magnitude. Paper prints are only good for about 300 samples per inch. Even an older Nikon film scanner is capable of resolving about 4,200 PPI from a negative. The negative scan will also reacquire dynamic range that was lost in the paper printing process. In addition, negatives don't deteriorate nearly as quickly as paper prints do, so your old photos will look much better scanned from the negs (again - if you saved them).
3) As mentioned, get your photos out from behind plastic and out of any albums that weren't made with acid-free paper. If you plan to keep them, find a climate-controlled storage facility of some sort, too.
4) As also mentioned, backup your digital image collection in several places on several different types of media. Optical storage media have not been around long enough to know how long they will last. Hard drives are magnetic and magnetic forces change/fade with time and drives fail. I back up to both optical and magnetic media and re-copy each backup every year or two. It doesn't take much time or money.
5) Archiving and preserving your treasured images is a labor of love and, if you want quality, does not come cheaply in terms of either money (to pay someone else to do it) or time and money (your's to buy the equipment and do the scanning yourself). Every time I have archived my own images or restored some for someone else, it has been more than worth it. You just have to be selective and understand that you can't do them all!
1) Scanning is superior to a copy stand and camera - for a number of different reasons.
2) Scanning the negs (if you have them) is superior to scanning the prints... by orders of magnitude. Paper prints are only good for about 300 samples per inch. Even an older Nikon film scanner is capable of resolving about 4,200 PPI from a negative. The negative scan will also reacquire dynamic range that was lost in the paper printing process. In addition, negatives don't deteriorate nearly as quickly as paper prints do, so your old photos will look much better scanned from the negs (again - if you saved them).
3) As mentioned, get your photos out from behind plastic and out of any albums that weren't made with acid-free paper. If you plan to keep them, find a climate-controlled storage facility of some sort, too.
4) As also mentioned, backup your digital image collection in several places on several different types of media. Optical storage media have not been around long enough to know how long they will last. Hard drives are magnetic and magnetic forces change/fade with time and drives fail. I back up to both optical and magnetic media and re-copy each backup every year or two. It doesn't take much time or money.
5) Archiving and preserving your treasured images is a labor of love and, if you want quality, does not come cheaply in terms of either money (to pay someone else to do it) or time and money (your's to buy the equipment and do the scanning yourself). Every time I have archived my own images or restored some for someone else, it has been more than worth it. You just have to be selective and understand that you can't do them all!
