Converting photo negatives to digital

[Scrapper007]

I went digital (with my camera) in 2004. I have ten years worth of photo negatives from 1994-2004 .. the first 10 years of my oldest dd's life. I am trying to decide if I should convert all of the negatives to digital or just leave them alone. I have regular photo albums with all of the printed photos from then all the way to today (I have always bought two sets and put one set into the albums and keep one to scrap)...well, that is until I went digi with my scrapping! I still get one set developed though every month and they are in the albums.

It would be a huge job to convert all of the negatives, but at the same time, it would be nice to have them all stored on DVDs and also so that I can digi scrap a lot of them! What have you done with your film negatives, if anything?

[Gabbina]

Same here!
I have TONS of negatives, from back to the 80s when I was a kid, and tons of negatives from before I was born. Those pictures are EVERYTHING to me, because there's my granpa and my aunt in it, I lived with them till 2 years ago, when they passed away, and I couldn't stand to lose them. Plus all of my parents pictures, wedding an so on.
I bought a scanner, this one (http://www.epson.it/Store/Scanner/Epson-Perfection-V500-Photo). It's the Epson V500 perfetcion photo. It can scan negatives, slides and normal picture. It even came with a free copy of PS elements. There are better scan, from Canon, but really really expensive, and there's the v600 and v700 from Epson too, but I did lots of researche online, and the V500 it's more than enough to me, since I'm not goint to print those scanned negatives too big, if even.
I know there are online services, though, you send them your pictures and they do the job for you, like Scanmyphotos.com. (http://www.scanmyphotos.com/). Too bad in europe we don't. :(If you can use them, I'd suggest to do so, buying the scanner and do the job it's pretty much the same as paying for them to do the job.
I figured that I wanted to have a backedup copy of those negatives because
- you never know, as you can lose your digital data, you can lose them too.
- In a few years, those may be too damaged to recovery, and I want my grandkids to see them!
- I wanted to scrap some of those!!

It's a huge, HUGE job to do, I have THOUSANDS of slides and negatives. But I'm not in a rush!

[Sharon Kay]

I purposely bought my Epson perfection 4490 Photo scanner because it can scan multiple negatives at one time ... multiple slides at one time ... and a variety of negative sizes. My previous scanner did one at a time ... talk about a lot of work on that one.

I DO scrap my negatives ... and I need to get back into that again. Gotta clean off the desk I want to use and move dh's laptop on there ...because I have in the past set it up where his laptop scans the negatives (I scan almost all of them to be 8x10" so I can scrap them at any size later and not lose resolution) and I scrap on my laptop. I can do that while he is at work and get quite a lot done in a day.

I ***DO*** have some negatives that are going bad ... and if I remember right they are Kodak negatives ... getting wavy lines in them ... and of course they are on some of my favorite toddler pics of my boys ... :crying: so you might want to get started on them.

Ok that got me thinking about it again ... guess I will pull those negatives out and get started again.

I have all my negatives in the 8x11" binder sleeves ... and as I scan them and know what's on them I put them in date order. ...just in case a hard drive fails and I need access to them again.

[nonnie]

I have been using Scan Cafe and sending them in - I just dont have the time to scan everything in myself - but I too have noticed that these negatives do tend to loose color and go bad

[Moodyjudy]

I have been thinking about getting my negatives scanned for a while now. I plan to create a book for my daughters confirmation. Her baby photos are all on negatives. Last week I ordered Canon CanoScan 9000F (http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Product_Finder/Scanners/Flatbed_with_Film_Scanning/CanoScan_9000F/). The scanner is supposed to restore scratched, damaged, dusty and faded film with ease. I decided to spend some extra money on the scanner to save me from lots of retouching work afterwards. I hope...
I haven't tried it as I haven't received it yet.

[ariesfl326]

This is what I use:
http://www.pandigital.net/search.asp?Mode=Type&TypeID=23 (the first one listed)

The only problem is that if you have mounted slides it will not work; they have to be unmounted. Negatives and photos work just fine in my experience but it does take some practice. I love that it is portable too! I've seen these for sale at Bed Bath & Beyond however I ordered mine from QVC.

[luckyme]

I'm in Canada and haven't found a reasonably priced option for having my negatives scanned, so I'm just doing it myself, piecemeal. I have all my negatives in a negative sleeve album, so I just go through that little by little, marking my place with a sticky note. Very high-tech. :) As I download them, I am careful to save them in a folders by year so that I can find them again. At first I was trying to remember when I took each photo and place them monthly, but my memory isn't that good! I can get the year right though, which is close enough.

I do scrap them, when I find the time! ;)

[Sharon Kay]

This is what I use:
http://www.pandigital.net/search.asp?Mode=Type&TypeID=23 (the first one listed)

The only problem is that if you have mounted slides it will not work; they have to be unmounted. Negatives and photos work just fine in my experience but it does take some practice. I love that it is portable too! I've seen these for sale at Bed Bath & Beyond however I ordered mine from QVC.

How large will it scan the negatives? I generally scan mine on the flat bed scanner at about 8x10" on 300 dpi.

I would love to get a not so expensive portable scanner ... that I could sit at robotics and scan negatives while I work on other projects for the team (I spend 16 hours a week there...can you imagine how many negatives I could scan in that time???) ...