High Quality Photo Scanning

[Steve Sherrick]

I am about to embark on a very personal project that will require me to get thousands of photos into high quality digital form. My needs are in the following order of priority:

• Quality (Resolution, tonal and color accuracy)
• Scan speed
• On the fly dust and dirt removal (something like ICE)

As far as I can tell, here are some of my options:

• Buy something along the lines of a Kodak PS50 or PS80 which seem to hit most of my needs based on the specs. But it's PC only which means I'd have to buy a PC or configure a Mac with Windows.
• Rent the PS50 through a company like this https://ezphotoscan.com/resources/rent-photo-scanner . They also provide the laptop.
• Buy a decent photo scanner from Epson. Might be tradeoffs between quality and scan speed.
• Some say the best results can come from actually photographing the photos. As long as you perfect the lighting, can line the photos up correctly, etc.
• Send the photos to a professional service and have them do it. Normally, I'd probably opt for this option due to efficiency, i.e. my time can be better spent doing other things but in this case, the photos are too valuable to risk sending them out to a service. So, the above mentioned options are better choices for me on this particular project.

Where will the photos end up? They will be used in a documentary piece I am producing. I will be filming the interviews in Red 4K, and I will incorporate the high res scans into a 4K master of the film. I will also archive the photos to disc and place in a safe deposit box as well as local fireproof storage.

Looking for some real world feedback from those who have experience in this area and might be able to help guide me to the best approach. I've worked on plenty of documentaries during my career but usually I am never directly involved in the scanning of this many photos as they are usually handled by outside resources, including places like the Frame Shop that did Ken Burns work.

One other thing I should note is that I will not be able to work in a clean room. It will be a normal office situation, so some dust will be involved, so any tips on that as well in terms of cleaning photos would be great too.

Appreciate any advice you may have. Thanks!

 

[Sergei Franklin]

If you are scanning negatives or slides I would get a Nikon scanner on ebay. Some models also handle medium format.
There is still info on the last ones they made on their website Nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Film-Scanners/index.page#archived
I think the previous models 8000 and 4000 had similar features.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Hi Sergei. These will all be prints that need to be scanned, no negatives.

 

[Michael Romano]

For prints, go with drum scanners. Very high resolution. They buy-in is rather high though

 

[Steve Sherrick]

For prints, go with drum scanners. Very high resolution. They buy-in is rather high though

Loks like a great tool. Definitely out of the budget though. Thanks for pointing me to these, it's good to know for the future.

 

[Rob Gardner]

Have you considered a professional copy camera stand, lights and a high quality SLR? That would probably be the fastest and the resolution should be quite high. We have had to do large numbers of archival still photographs for historical television and we ended up doing this. The physical process of changing prints, and getting the image is just much faster this way than it is on a scanner. You can do it with a glass sheet if you have curling photos, and with a camera stand and a zoom lens you can re-frame for different sizes very fast. I can send you a photograph of our setup, if you'd like.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Have you considered a professional copy camera stand, lights and a high quality SLR? That would probably be the fastest and the resolution should be quite high. We have had to do large numbers of archival still photographs for historical television and we ended up doing this. The physical process of changing prints, and getting the image is just much faster this way than it is on a scanner. You can do it with a glass sheet if you have curling photos, and with a camera stand and a zoom lens you can re-frame for different sizes very fast. I can send you a photograph of our setup, if you'd like.

Thanks for the response Rob. I would like to see your setup. The Kodak scanners are doing 50-80 photos per minute at 300 DPI. So speed is in its favor but not sure about quality compared to photographing the prints.

 

[Curtis Stanton]

The Kodak scanners are doing 50-80 photos per minute at 300 DPI. So speed is in its favor but not sure about quality compared to photographing the prints.

I'm not an expert, and don't know anything about the Kodak batch scanning process, but I've scanned a lot of slides using a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000. My experience suggests that if you care about quality, batch scanning is out. You can do a great deal of manipulation of the image with good scanning software before actually scanning. Manipulation done during the scanning process is accomplished with less image quality degradation than post-scanning changes made in Photoshop or Lightroom. This includes establishing black points and white points, white balance and color balance using curve and histogram tools, highlight and shadow adjustments, etc. And you can't do much about auto-focus screwups in Photoshop.

Curtis