I’m in the process of moving, and in clearing out my room, I’m coming across tons of photos from the past ten years. In my quest to rid myself of all things paper, I’d like to get 'em all scanned so I can store them online, or at least on my Compy.
So, is there anywhere I can go so I can drop off a shoebox full of photos and pick up a CD-ROM or two a week later? It seems like this service would be available.
And in my quest to state the completely obvious: have you tried Kinko’s? (Now, apparently, FedEx Kinko’s). I know that there are individual scanning stations there, but I imagine that they’d be prepared to handle them by the crapload if you went to the business services desk.
Of course, it’d be extremely expensive. At that point, you’d be just as well off getting your own flatbed scanner, since they’re relatively cheap at this point. When I bought a printer a few months ago, I had a hard time finding one that wasn’t also a scanner. I think it came out to around $150.
Agreed that it will be expensive. Cost it out - say 2 minutes per scan (and if it means individual prints, making sure each one is horizontal, etc., it’s not a generous time), times 3000, that’s 90 hours work. And you presumably don’t want the minimum-wage goon doing it. So say three weeks’ work. Big money.
I’m a graphic designer. Buy a scanner. It is the least expensive way to do it.
Time consuming? Yes. Save you a lot of money? Absolutely.
Oh, and I used to work for the company mentioned. Don’t waste your money. You can get a flatbed scanner for as little as $50 or you can get one of those copier/printer/scanners for $100-200. We just bought a decent one and with the rebate it was $100 plus we got a couple gift cards worth $20 each.
Your choice. Everyone should learn how to scan anyways, IMO.
Minimum wage? Yeah, pretty close.
Goon? That’s not very nice. Remember, those people who work in that department have to have education or experience before they get hired.
I suppose I should explain that, as my random figure for a hundred 36-exp films minus failures…
OK, how does ‘budding graphic designer’ sound? 
Anyway, I’m involved with a huge pile of old-photo-scanning at the minute, so I’ll put up the pretence of being the expert until somebody knowledgeable comes along.
Shoulda mentioned that I do have a scanner, but hate being hunched over it for more than a few minutes a at a time.
I thought the process had been automated by now. If my copy machine at work can scan & print a couple of pages a minute without me touching it, I figured a similar contraption would be able to scan and save a few photos a minute. I’m not even looking for high-res.
They do have relatively inexpensive scanners with feeders on them – we bought one at my last workplace. I think it cost less than $200. We only used it with 8.5x11 paper, so I don’t know if it would work with photos, but it worked pretty well. We could do ~25 sheets of paper at a time, which was nice.
Document feeders are designed for paper. The ones on the mass market aren’t designed to take big piles of photos, because what you’re talkign about is a comparitively small market (many people scanning photos do care about resolution, about gettin each image right etc, and so don’t want to do the whole lot in bulk.) Plus the added problems for a document feeder to deal with photos (come on, when are they ever completely flat? 
)
get some kid from the neighbourhood to do it for you on your scanner for half the price?
Just an FYI, when I called our Kinko’s to find out about prices, they said $14.99* per scan. I don’t know if it’s cheaper in a mass heap, but that sounded like a buttload of money to me.
*In another thread, I was just lamenting the useless Num Lock key, and of course I click it by accident, and instead of $14.99 my cursor is jumping all over the place. Damnit!
My community college has a scanner that people can use in the library by the computers. As far as I know, the priveledge to use it isn’t reserved for students only.
Do you have any community colleges by you?