Last month I bought a film scanner – something I have been hankering after for ages. Ever since I started shooting film and Polaroid in favour of digital it was a must. The scanner has a negative and slide tray with it which I intended to use to archive all of my old photos. What I wasn’t prepared for was the time involved in doing this. Scanning high-res negatives takes a good few minutes for each photo – where 300dpi photo scans are much quicker.
I’m done this mainly to get a digital backup and to get a few choice photos up on Flickr.
My mother has given me some slides she took when my sister was born. She hasn’t seen these for over 30 years and it will be great to get these into the computer. I also have a few packs of slides that I bought at car boot sales. I’m keen to get a Found Photo set established on Flickr and get these uploaded.
I’m trying to get a 30 or so done every weekend. This may be hit and miss but I’ve already made a start and intend to keep at it. I’ll borrow photos from my parents each weekend I see them as well. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, binned all her negatives a few years ago. A few of her sets are starting to stick together as she never put them in albums. I’m seeing my photo scanning as mission of mercy before my childhood photos are ruined.
On a side ‘Thing’ – I’m also putting more of my film photos into albums. Like the hoarder I am I’m not getting rid of any negatives or photos that don’t make it into albums. I’ll be buying a big air-tight plastic box in which to keep these in the loft.
I can’t see this process ever really coming to an end due to my magpie like skills to acquiring photos but once the majority as scanned I’ll consider it done.
