What to do with old photos?

I've shot photos for over 40 years. Only the last 10 years or so have been digital, so as you can imagine, I have thousands (actually 10s of thousands) of images on slides and negatives. The good news is that I actually have and can find most of those slides and negatives.

All of my digital photos are on my computer, and "cataloged" (at least imported, not all are well cataloged) in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I found that once the photos were on the computer and cataloged, it was rather easy to locate them, tweak them (improve cropping, exposure, or fix the many where the camera just wouldn't stay level), and print, upload or email them so they could be shared. My first joy of photography is seeing again the pictures I have taken through the years. And the second joy is sharing these with others.

But what to do with the thousands of analog images? What else? Scan them and put them on the computer! So I've been doing that, a few rolls at a time, for the last 5 years or more. My first attempt was with a flatbed scanner that didn't have sufficient resolution or dynamic range (difference from darkest to lightest areas that can be recognized). Then I bought a dedicated film scanner and that opened up a whole new world. I found that the prints that had been made from the negatives were lacking range and color. And I could crop photos to improve them, or adjust under- or over-exposed photos. Many photos that I had thought to be only so-so turned out to be much more.

There are a number of scanners now available that will do an adequate job of scanning your negatives and slides. I scan my negatives and slides at around 2000 dpi. That's about all the detail that is in most of them. And with that I can easily make 8" x 10" prints even after a little cropping. If you were shooting on fine-grain film with very good lenses, and you want to get all the possible detail, you might try scanning at higher resolutions, but for me at higher resolution I just saw more film grain!

So far I've scanned about 10,000 negatives and slides. It's been fun to look back through the years and bring back photos from the past. I have many to go, but limited time. I usually scan a full roll at a time. It's just easier that way. I catalog the photos as I go - I have marked most photos with the date they were taken, and so set the "create" time of the digital image on the computer to match. I have also scanned old family photos going back into the 19th century.

So now I can look at these old photos any time I wish. And I can easily share these with family and friends. Now all I need to do is scan those other 10 or 20 thousand photos. :-)

If you want a little different slant on this, and more detail, take a look at this article from Shutterbug magazine: http://www.shutterbug.com/content/it-may-not-be-cull-after-all-some-notes-my-scanning-experiences.