Easy way to transfer tons of old photos to flash drive

Thanks Bumpy. Found it at Sams on-line: Honestech VHS to DVD 5.0 Deluxe. This is a link to it from Amazon clicky Gets good reviews. Of course, I threw the VHS player away a few months ago. They're easy to find though.

Belgique wrote:
May I hijack a teeny bit: same question as the OP's but for VHS tapes to some type of electronic media?

On edit: found this http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/how-to-convert-vhs-to-dvd/article. This seems to cover everything?

sams club had a device for about $60 that had a USB output and RCA plug inputs designed for such conversion. supposedly would work with any device that outputs via RCA?
bumpy

If you wish to copy entire folders then this works through XP, and I suspect beyond.

Open the folder you wish to transfer and press CTRL-A (This should highlight all the files in that folder, the translation (or drop down menu path) is "EDIT | SELECT ALL)

Now oress CTRL-C (EDIT | COPY)

Now open the Flash Drive, if necessary create a folder on that drive and open that folder and press CTRL-V (Edit | Paste).

Sit back.

ALternate.

Find the folder you wish to copy... Then back up one level, highlight the folder and choose EDIT | COPY or right click and choose copy or CTRL-C

now go to the flash drive and EDIT | Paste or Ctrl-V

This **SHOULD** copy the folder and it's contents but I can not guarantee. the first method copies all files within the folder.

May I hijack a teeny bit: same question as the OP's but for VHS tapes to some type of electronic media?

On edit: found this http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/how-to-convert-vhs-to-dvd/article. This seems to cover everything?

I have used a few different ways to digitize old photos, slides, etc over the last 5 years. Recently I purchased a slide/negative scanner from Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/DBTech-35mm-Slide-Negative-Scanner/dp/B007VDN1PA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379416639&sr=8-1&keywords=slide+scanner which I enjoyed using. Probably did just over a thousand old 35MM slides with it. The old slides, 30 to 40 years of age had suffered from the effects of time on them, but they came out good enough for what I wanted. Once I had the slides out of the little boxes or out of the trays, I was able to scan about 5 or 6 slides per minute.

With paper photos, it will also handle negatives. Most of the time, in the olden days when we had film developed, we got back prints and the negatives in the box. For some unknown reason we threw away most of the negatives and only kept the prints. But if a person still has the negatives, then a scanner like this one will do them as well. One feature I really like was the small scanner saved the digital image to an SD chip, not even needing to be connected to a computer. Then download the SD chip to multiple computers was easy and quick, using Picasa 3.

In the past I digitized many of our prints on a flat bed scanner, it worked, but slow and boring project, much like watching paint dry.

My BIL, that lives in DC, went with the commercial method and dropped off his old slides and prints at a local camera shop, which then went to India to be digitized. He received an email with the URL as to their location on the internet. He was able to sign on and then view all the finished product. By checking, the ones he wanted to have them put on a CD/DVE, he didn't have to pay for any of the "out of focus, duplicates, etc". Once he had done this, in a couple of weeks he received all his originals back with the disks of the digital ones. Cost was about $.35usd per photo. He spent a couple of hundred dollars and was well satisfied with the end results.

After digitizing this last thousand slides I put them on our Picasa Album, online. (now called google + photos) Set them up to share with immediate family members and find my two young grandsons, 8 and 10, spend time looking at the photos at their home, especially those of their mother, our oldest daughter, when she was about their age. I believe I am now finished with digitizing all our old photos, prints and slides, so the new small scanner is soon to be headed to my other BIL in Portland, for him to scan their old slides.

Fortunately technology has overcome drugstore and production developers that could care less or just don't know. Restoration in 99% of the pix these is just a push button away to beat anything a human could do back then. The other 1% is why the Image Tranforms, and the surviving companies like yours are still in the game for.

(Edit iPad spelling)

Bumpyroad wrote:

1492 wrote:
How valuable are your photos? I'm always a little leery of handing over priceless photos over to a third party service. Especially, if they are not a professional lab. You don't know if they will handle them properly to prevent damage, or if they may even be lost. Better IMO to do it yourself. .

reminds me of a trip I had to Egypt a number of years ago which also included giving some presentations to a branch of their government. not totally stupid I brought along a bunch of spare/seconds slides. they of course wanted to borrow/copy them and when I got them back it looked like they had put them through a wringer on an old washing machine. :)
bumpy

Back in the late '80s, I was director of motion picture and video services for one of the largest companies of its kind in the DC area. We also had a professional still photo lab department, that specialized in providing slide and 5x7 transparency duplications virtually identical to the originals. Our clients were well known photographers and stock photo agencies around the U.S. They would send us their originals, which takes a lot of faith in any company as they are irreplaceable. In turn, these stock agencies would send out our custom duplications to ad agencies, magazines, news outlets, etc, preserving their originals. In fact, our transparency duplication equipment were all custom made, actually from converted 35MM and 70MM motion picture cameras.

I was not involved with the still photo department, but occasionally would get a request to make a slide show video of a client's 35mm slides. Doing so took a custom built optical stand and computer, either shot on 16mm film negative or on Betacam SP cameras. A 5-10 minute slide show video would typically cost our clients $2,500.-$3,500. Adding music and narration was extra, and could end up costing $5-6,000.+ You would not believe how many requests we had, in the healthy six figures yearly for just this service.

Of course, the only PCs at that time were 8088XT based, or Apple IIc I believe. No slide show software or personal scanners for that matter. But, we were a professional service, and carefully handled and cleaned each slide before any type of duplication or transfer to video.

Fast forward today to drug store or warehouse services offering photo and slides to CD/DVD transfers. Does anyone really believe these are professionally trained photo technicians? Cause whether you are a pro photographer, stock agency, or just someone with family photos, they are just as precious and irreplaceable in most cases. So best to do the photo scanning and archiving yourself as you will likely do so with the proper respect that it deserves.

You likely have a cheap scanner, pretty difficult today to buy a cheap inkjet printer without getting the scanner/copier functions too. Most will do a halfway decent job with prints.

For best results, it is a lot of work, photo scanner (Epson or Canon) about $200 to $500 will come with decent photo scanning software and something for image processing, editing, cataloging; Epson ships Photoshop Elements with photo scanners.

I've been through the scanning on all-in-one, redoing the work now on Epson V500, first pass costs me about 3 to 5 minutes per image, scanning, editing, cataloging into my library, tagging on people and subjects. But that's a whole lot more than just getting pictures onto a flash drive. Its worth the time for me because 15,000 to 20,000 prints, negatives, slides cover a lifetime of serious sports and travel photography I want to preserve, and a couple thousand more of family memories from collections of prints back into the late 19 th century.

Easy way is to hire out the work, it is also 'quick' in the sense of requiring little of your time, but not necessarily turnaround time. Costs can range from a fraction of a dollar to a few dollars per image, depending on the quality of the work you want done. Kodak used to do it at a fairly low cost, their PhotoCD program. They could do much better with negatives and slides, vs prints, as all too many prints are made on "copyproof" paper finishes, and color prints fade fast if they wre any good to start with. Lowest cost today is discount store photo labs, best quality is professional labs at maybe 10x the price.

I worked in the Photo Industry for many years. There is a whole lot of Human Emotion involved in photographic images. Remember that a Picture is worth a Thousand words!

That said I'm very much afraid that there truly are very few People who actually will be interested in looking at Your Old Pictures in the future.

Sure there are some significant events that have been preserved for posterity in photographs ! the Last Spike, Presidential moments, Churchill,Hitler, Ghandi, Michael Jackson, Elvis!

But when You get right down to it ! One picture of You is all that may survive. the rest are Your Memories and Your Memory is Yours and Yours alone. Once You are gone it is most unlikely that any of Your Relatives will ever look at Your Pictures .

Use a photo scanner mine is a Epson, takes time but not to bad in the winter. Did about 1500 slides, son bought me a scanner for Christmas. I think for selfish reasons he new he was going to inherit all those slides.