Scanning photos/negatives question

I have sent negatives out. The company I used is right here in the US (Indianapolis) and you have tracking information all during the process. They also have a lot of deals (like Shutterfly) so I found a time when they were relatively cheap. They also have pricing that if you scanned a large amount, you got a cheaper price per negative. I also like that they can do the odd size negatives. You also have your choice of dpi for the scan. The larger the dpi, the more it cost.

Many of the negatives I scanned I didn't know what was on them so I did end up with scanned photos that I had the original photos for. At this time I have kept both. Just a couple weeks ago I got together with some high school friends so I just took a couple envelopes of photos (all my photos are sorted/labeled) to share with them. I also have shared photos from the 1969 Homecoming Parade for Neil Armstrong this last month with people as I see them. I have them digitally as well and you know what. The scanned negative photos are much better than the originals.

So for now, I have both. I have a place to keep them so that's not an issue.

 

What is least painful and more likely to get done? That's what I would start with.

I scanned negatives first until they were done because they were degrading really badly.
Then I decided I had some time so I scanned some of the original photos. I was pickier about the photos. I went through and basically said "Does this photo have value to my family?" Yes - it was scanned, no - it was let go. Like you, I think some of the original photos look better because they aren't degraded like the negatives.

My next big task is to sort through them better so I can find them. But I have piece of mind that they are scanned and backed up. They are semi-organized in folders, but not enough to make it easy to find them. As I have spare time, I've gone through and started tagging them and adding metadata.

 

@QuiltyMom

Honestly, I think you need to think twice about tossing stuff. What is not meaningful to you may be meaningful to someone else.

My grandparents took lots of photos only this was in the era when everybody was doing slides. When my grandfather died in 1995, my uncle was the one to clean out the house. It was several years before he got around to going through the slides. By then both his sisters were dead so he couldn't even discuss it with them. One day he showed up at my house with a baggie of slides that were of my family. He had separated them out by grandchildren. My grandparents took long trips each summer throughout the US and took many photos. When I asked about those slides he said he had thrown all of them away. I was in shock! Do you know how many historical photos were in there? Dozens. When I told my cousin she was even more upset than I was. She was a teacher and she could have used those slides in her classroom. By him not even asking if we were interested, a lot was lost. Thankfully my grandfather let me go through the photo albums the summer before he died and told me to take any photos I wanted. I took a lot of photos of extended family since I was beginning to research genealogy at that time. Sadly, there were more of those family in photos that got tossed.

Another thing. I am on a FB group that is about my town. Several people on there are fascinated with history and old photos and have gone as far as buying lots of stuff off ebay that are identified as being from this area. As they identify people in photos, they post them in the group. Many lost photos have been returned to their family. One gal was so happy because she now has a photo of the grandparents she never knew and had only heard about. She is now motivated to find out more about her family. So my point is, don't count out the younger generation not being interested.

This past year has been all about history in my town as it geared up for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Many people have dug into their old photos and shared them with others. The committee was even asking for help in finding old photos of certain events from 50 years ago. Had all these people thrown these photos away, the town's history would be lost forever.

I could go on and on but I won't. Just sharing 3 examples of when not throwing something away is beneficial.

Just My Not So Humble Opinion.

 

And

Both of those quotes of yours, Jan, remind me of the that Swedish "death cleaning" mindset. it sounds like you want to make life easier not just for yourself but also for people (probably your kids) in the future. That's what I'm trying to do, too.
As for your slides: if you have the time to go through them, then that's great! Once they're all sorted and you've got your keepers, maybe then it'll be easier to decide whether to keep actual photos. I'm always a fan of keeping the physical item because I don't fully trust technology lol and I worry my computer/EHDs will break or become obsolete. And when I die no one will have access to my BackBlaze except DH if he can figure out my password...so no one will have those items, either. But if you hate the idea of keeping ALL of them, what about keeping your favorite photos from each year? Like maybe 2 or 3 photos. Then you could keep them in one album to save space and to help your kids from having to deal with it all? (Same with the slides: keep a few from each year and keep them in a "my parents' life" slide case and a case for yourself.)

Wow, I digress lol. I'm just spitballing here. My mom has albums from 40+ years ago thru today. I know one day they all will be mine and I already plan to winnow them down to one or two albums. (But I'll scan/photograph many of the photos before tossing them out. Oh, and she doesn't keep negatives.) Just because SHE thought twelve pics of Wall Drug's exterior were necessary doesn't mean I do.

Good luck figuring out what works for you!

 

@Tree City

Years ago, after mom died and Dad moved to NC, I decided to take over their bedroom for myself. I was cleaning out Mom's closet and found an album I had never known about. I was 46 or 47 years old at the time. It was an album she had done for of photos and memorabilia from their wedding. (My mom was way ahead of her time... she documented stuff back in the 50's!). It was falling apart. I carefully took everything out of it and in a weekend had transferred it to a CM pages/album. Ironically, the weekend I did it would have been their 48th anniversary and I had not even thought of that when I did it!

The next time Dad came home, I showed him and he cried. He had forgotten about it as well. It is now proudly displayed with all of my other albums.

In those early days of CM scrapping, I also did an album for my cousin's college football career. He came to my house when Dad died and I showed it to him. He cried. I told him, it will be his some day. I just need to see him to give it to him!

Learning about CM products is really what got me into scrapbooking. I treasure all those albums I did in the early 2000's and pull them out to look at them quite often. I know once I'm gone, they will probably be trashed since I have no children but I certainly enjoy the process and looking at them myself. Especially at the age I am now.

I also agree with you about keeping photos vs everything being digital. My computer crashed during a power outage in May. I'm still trying to figure out if I have everything because evidently neither one of my backups(Backblaze and an EHD) had worked consistently for a couple of weeks. But I still have all those original photos! LOL

 

@HavaDrPepper That is so sweet, how your dad and your cousin appreciated the albums you made! And you make a good point: we scrapbook because we like to do it. And OMG OMG OMG, to have your computer crash like that must have been horrible! Thank goodness you had the original photos!

 

Before you rescrap, consider scanning/photographing. I photographed all my old paper scrapbooks. It was work, but less than redoing the paper pages. Slowly, I'm uploading them so I can reprint them in a photobook. It'd be faster, but school got in the way.

Um, not to be morbid, but this is not a good thought! DH and I both have a "death list". It's a list of places and things that we manage, with the passwords, so that the other can get in. Things like TLP, Facebook, etc. Backblaze info is in there too. If I die, I don't want to disappear from my online friends. I want them to know what happened.

 

That's not morbid, it's practical. Or maybe that's easy for me to say cuz, like you, I have a list of passwords, but I do worry that I'll change a password and forget to update the PW in my book. And with BB, that's my baby, not DH's. I doubt he'd think to go on there to download stuff. (Sigh. I guess that means I should explain to him how to do it?) As far as my "online presence," he knows whom to contact so that they can pass on the news. (I figure my friends are less likely to change their phone numbers/email addresses than I am to change my passwords for those sites.) Maybe DH and I need a more formal "death list," like you guys. I know people are starting to add a similar item to their will. (And is this a good time to mention that DH hates writing down PWs and refuses to do it? He laughs at my Internet address book. Double sigh.)

 

Please I know it is slightly of subject, but how do you scan negatives ??? A few years ago I stored all our photos in a unit that stood u p against a,wall that developed damp damage without us realizing it, before it was to late. Many photos got absolutely ruined. The negatives fared slightly better. I would love to try a d scan some. Do y out need a special scanner ?????

 

@Nemla there are negative scanners you can buy. I had one but it would only scan 35mm negatives. It was also a lower quality scan. I also had a small portable photo scanner that was also a lower quality scan.

Or you can have someone else do them. There are many companies that do negative/photo/tape scanning. They have the best equipment.

 

@QuiltyMom the only issue that i forsee is that the media now re disk and such work for now, but down the road the technology will be different and the photos and scans of negtives will be lost. We saw that with VCR to DVD.. very few have VCR machines or places close by to have them converted.. same with all the negatives etc... No more floppy disk or the disks that came after that.. I still have zip drive disks from my Dad that I need to toss as no way to retrieve. the technology will be changing down the road just like it has through our generation and unless for each technology change you convert it all, it is going to be lost.

 

@cfile has a very good point.

I found VHS-C tapes in my purge of 2018. I had them labeled so knew they were videos I had recorded in the 90's on my camcorder. I spent the money to have them digitized when they had a discount on those costs.

I also have some VHS tapes I digitized as well. Although I do still have a VHS recorder/player that works. Will have to say that one of the VHS tapes that I had converted was one my mother had put together back in the early days of VHS from family slides and pictures. We called it "Reminiscing... The Way We Were" and the local shop that did it for us played that music throughout the tape. After I had it digitized, I made copies for the family along with copies of the paperwork that notated who was in each slide. Some had never seen it and loved it since there were photos of extended family members that were a major part of all celebrations in the 50's/60's. And, the grandkids that weren't even a twinkle in the eye back in those days thought it was cool to see photos of their great-great grandparents.

 

Ah, my mom feels your situation. She cleaned out her parents home after they both passed. Almost 40 round trays of slides from trips that they took. She kept the photos with people in them and tossed the rest. I have since scanned most of those pictures.

I scanned a lot of slides and negatives myself. I also sent a batch off to be scanned. Both worked well. I still have a small bag of additional slides to be scanned. My next project is to get all of these photos to my siblings. My mother also has a lot of old printed photos. I need to go scan or photograph those too.

 

Rene, My husband converted our home movies and the VHS stuff plus included slides into a DVD he did by decades with music of my family after my Dad passed in 2012. I still kept all the movies and VHS but as I found out last week, the computer is much different and I would have to go out and purchase more stuff to connect the wires from the VCR to the computer in order to convert. I had a video tape from my 10 year HS reunion (1989) and was going to bring a conversion to the guy doing all the planning, I finally decided to just give him the VHS tape and not worry about it as I am not paying to convert, so it is all what you are willing to do.