With a Five Minute Warning, What Would You Grab?
Life on Mars. Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle
As if Coronavirus and the election weren’t worrisome enough, we in the Bay Area, and all throughout California, suffered the worst wildfire season on record this summer/early fall. Day after day, we were trapped inside our stuffy homes with windows closed, air purifiers churning, and countless refreshes of airnow.gov for the latest AQI readings. You might have even heard of that infamous September 9th day when we woke up on Mars and the sun never shone..
We were very fortunate in the East Bay not to have fire come directly our way. That being said, we were warned to stay on high alert with our go bags ready and our keepsakes close at hand to evacuate if needed. And for me, that meant the possibility of needing to salvage my 1000’s of photographs that predate the digital era.
With 20 plus photo albums and several overflowing archival boxes of prints, there’s just no way I could escape with all of them on a moments notice. So now more than ever, it was time to invest in a “fast scanner” to digitize my old photographs. How old? We’re talking 20 years worth of prints, from 1981 - 2001, the year I got my first digital camera.
If You’re Looking for a Fast Scanner
You’d be surprised to learn that there are not that many fast scanners on the market. A fast scanner is one where you can “bulk load” photos into a document feeder versus scanning them the “old fashioned way” one by one on a flatbed surface. And so a little research revealed the Epson FastFoto-680W as a great option. It’s not cheap ($599), but it can scan photos up to 1200 dots per inch, and up to 36 photos at a time at 3 seconds per photo at 600 dpi. That’s good enough for the majority of my “snapshots.”
If I had to guestimate, I’d say I probably have around 6,000 or so photos I need to scan. So it’s going to be a long haul, but I am committed to doing it bit by bit. And as I have been scanning away, I’ve been sharing the newly created digital photo albums with all those folks who are showing up in the photos. At this point, it’s been lots of summer camp, high school, and early college year photos. People have really appreciated the walk down memory lane…
Making Them Even Better in Lightroom
Creating “order” from chaos!
To be fair, I am not getting amazing professional quality photos from these scans. Part of that has to do with the scanner (there are more professional level scanners that will give you significantly better results), but part of it has to do with the reality that many of these prints were not that high quality to begin with. We’re talking about some of the earlier photos being shot with a 110 camera, or at best an entry level Pentax 35mm point and shoot.
But one can make fairly good edits in Lightroom to enhance the contrast, saturation, and clarity of these scanned photos, if desired. I am not going to be tweaking all my photos, but here are just under 25 of my favorites to date that I did bring into Lightroom, each with a little backstory/context below. I’m only up to March of 1990, but I’m going to keep plugging away.
So what’s your plan for protecting your keepsakes? Let me know if you’ve done anything similar with your old photos.
