Scanners and printers

[Tom Godley]

I am looking for some info on scanners - Both of my maternal grandparents (born 1892) came from families in the photo business -- so we have a lot of great old prints floating around the different members of the current family.

I was into film photography to the point of having a darkroom at one point - but my use of digital equipment has been much less. I have bought some equipment that I have used very little. Mostly to make prints I take from a telescope.

This past Christmas my sister took a great print of my mother as a child -- it was an old silver print my grandfather made in 1921 -- had it scanned and printed at a photoshop (not a drug store) and gave everyone a copy.

I was thinking that I should make an effort to scan all the pictures we have, getting them in some digital form. I ran a test of my current (3 year old) Epson photo scanner using the original print of my mother -- then ran it through photoshop elements and printed it out on my old dye simulation printer (Olympus 400). It came out better than the print my sister had made! Looked quite good using my HP photo printer also.

My question really has to do with what type of scanner do I need to properly scan the photos - Can/should I buy one? Or should I take the photos to a pro (not my sisters) to have them scanned.

Thank for any help

[Jim Becker]

For the few times I actually scan paper photos, the inexpensive Cannon flat bed scanner I have has done very well with getting the material into my system. And from there PhotoShop Elements and an add-in I use called Essentials really spiff the old photos up!

[Benjamin Dahl]

Tom, I had a similar dilema and ended up at the same place Jim did. You probably don't need a new scanner but if you do go that route, here are a couple of examples.
The scanners today have more resolution than a couple of years ago. The Epson has 6400 dpi, while the canon multi-function machine has 4800. The nice thing about the dedicated scanner is that it comes with photo enhancing software and some negative holders. If you really want to reproduce a lot of pictures (or have digital copies) it might be worth your while. I have not used either of these products and just posted them as examples. I am not sure that you would notice much of a difference between 4800 and 6400 dpi unless you were making really large prints.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/496399-REG/Epson_B11B189011_Perfection_V500_Photo_Flatbed.htm l
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/531410-REG/Canon__Pixma_MP970_Photo_All_in_One.html

Hope this helps.
Ben

[Jim O'Dell]

I don't use a scanner much, We have an 8 yo really cheap one for the few times we need to scan.
But for printing pictures, we bought the HP 8350 (I think that's the model #, I'm not at home at the moment) and we printed Christmas pictures on HP special photo paper, and I'd swear they look like Kodak prints from the lab. They were exceptional. Really surprised us. And it was a printer that sold for about 80.00! Jim.