Caveats for Scanning

Grandpa took many of his pictures on slide film. Scanning these slides yields awesome results. The Nikon Coolscan V that I use comes with Digital ICE software to automate the restoration process. When possible, I highly recommend using a dedicated film/slide scanner and Digital ICE to digitize your family history, with certain caveats.

The first caveat is time. The scanning process is slow, and using the Digital ICE tools makes it painfully slow. I am talking minutes per scan, so you need time and a larger perspective about archiving history. Really, though, if time is a huge concern, then personally digitizing your family history is probably not your thing.

The second caveat is money. You need equipment to digitize pictures, and the good stuff is not cheap. The Coolscan cost hundreds of dollars when it was available (and it no longer is) and the film scanners currently available are typically more expensive. I initially tried cheaper methods -- flatbed scanners with film capabilities and even digital photos of projected slides (!) -- and was dissatisfied with the results. Sure, they can work in a pinch, but if I only want to do this once (and some things can only be done once when access to source material is limited) then I want to do it right. Used scanners are available, and outside professional services might also be reasonably priced for smaller projects.

The third caveat is storage. The scanned files are (and, really, should be) huge. They come out of the Coolscan as 60+ mb tiff files! I batch process them to make them smaller, but there is no getting around the size issue for quality files. Again, if you are going to do it, do it right. Buy a 1 tb hard drive so that space is not an issue.

The fourth caveat is experience. It takes knowledge to understand what the equipment and software do and how to best use it. Much of this knowledge comes from the trial and error of just doing it, i.e. experience. Sometimes, though, the trial and error part can be shortened by learning from others who have done it.

I guess the experience part is where I might be able to help you. I do not have the time, money, or storage space to do everyone's digitizing. But, I do have some self-taught experience that I would love to share to make your task easier. My price (FREE!) is pretty good, too.