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How to transfer a large library of photographic images
Narrowed It Down To 1
This is a project that I need to do and was putting off the research until I saw this request. I have used various scanners in the past and never attempted anything with negatives or 35mm. My main desire here is that I have a lot slides and negatives stored that I would like to share with others and digital is the only way to fly to save these for posterity.
One of the key reasons for narrowing the selection down to one is the volume that has been requested here. Three thousand images will take some time and we would need a scanner that is designed to handle multiple images all at once and some sort of racking system to position the slides, negatives or images to be scanned.
The best answer is the HP Scanjet G4050 Photo Scanner which sells for around $200 US. The reason the link here is to HP Canada is because the product information sheet includes two very good descriptive videos by Steve Dotto who hosts one of those "computer geek" TV shows called DottoTech. It's a Canadian production. The link will guide you to a lot of other interesting articles on selecting a computer, MP3 player and other digital devices. So we have found another bonus link.
He does an excellent job of explaining how the scanner works and shows how to scan a photograph. The video also shows all the racks that come with scanner so you can see that it will handle 16 slides at once. I could only find others that handled 4-6 at a time. The videos do an excellent job of explaining some of the basic details of how the scanner works, so they are both worth viewing if you are looking to take on this project yourself.
And it would appear that it works as a conventional scanner as well. All the necessary software is included in the package. The other scanners are a little cheaper but if you look at the bang for the buck here, the G4050 is the answer.
The only thing it can't do is fix the content of the pictures that you are scanning. The guy in the video wearing shorts, barbecuing in the late 50's or early 60's, should know better than to dress like that in public. I guess his favourite Hawaiian shirt was in the washing machine.