If you’re like me, you’ve inherited old photo albums with the pictures held down on so called magnetic pages. The trouble with these albums is that the adhesive used and the plastic liners damage the photos over time. Removing the photos is a priority. I went looking for help and boiled my research down to these seven essential steps…Read more.
Posted in Ancestors, How to, Photos, Preservation, Resources, Restoration, Tips
Tagged Facebook, flickr, How to, old photos, Photograph, Photograph album, Photographic Activity Test, photography, Picasa, preserving, save, storing, Tips
Are you looking for a dedicated photo scanner that’ll give you excellent results without breaking the bank? Here are three that deserve your attention – the Canon CanoScan 9000F and the Epson Perfection V500 and V600. All receive high ratings by users and reviewers.
But before you rush out the door to purchase one, keep this in mind. If you have a high volume of prints and slides to digitize, you’d be wise to consider using a local lab. It simply takes too long on a flatbed scanner to process a large collection. If you don’t have a local lab, check out ScanMyPhotos They’ve been around for 22 years and have impressive reviews.
If you’re still determined to buy a photo scanner, you might take a moment to read Guide to Desktop Scanners by Imaging Resource.
After some careful research here are my top three picks:
Canon CanoScan 9000F ( Amazon $213.33 , B&H $174.95
“While Canon’s CanoScan 8800F and Epson’s V600 battle it out in the sub-$200 flatbed film scanner sweepstakes, Canon has quietly trumped them both with its highest resolution film flatbed ever: the CanonScan 9000F…[it] delivered credible results. We were surprised by how well our slides were captured with detail in both the highlights and shadows.” Imaging Resource Complete review
Epson Perfection V500 (Amazon $139.99, B&H $139.95
“Epson has knocked one out of the park with this scanner. It offers high-quality scans for both prints and film and features an LED light source that eliminates warm-up time. Like almost any flatbed scanner, the V500 can handle all-purpose scanning, but it’s focused on photos. This makes it most appropriate for anyone (short of a professional photographer) who needs to scan a backlog of prints and film (including slides) to digital format.” PCMag.com Complete review
Epson Perfection V600 (Amazon $199.00, B&H $170.95
“The V600 fits in Epson’s line between the less expensive Editors’ Choice Epson Perfection V500 Photo, scanner and the more expensive Epson Perfection V700 Photo. Despite the evenly spaced model numbers, it’s much closer in price and capability to the V500, but it offers some important extras. In particular, it includes Digital ICE—the hardware-based approach for digitally removing dust and scratches—for both prints and film. The V500 includes Digital ICE for film only…[the V600]offers more than acceptable scan quality and speed, and compared to the V500, it offers additional flexibility for medium format film plus Digital ICE…” PCMag.com Complete review
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Photo by iStockphoto
Posted in Home Office, Photos, Preservation, Resources, Tips
Tagged best, budget priced, Canon, Canon CanoScan 9000F, Digital ICE, Epson, Epson V500, Epson V600, excellent, film scanner, Image scanner, photo scanner, scanner, Tips, under $200
Posted in Ancestors, How to, Photos, Preservation
Tagged Ancestors, How to, old photos, Photos, preserving, Resources, save, storing, Tips
Posted in Ancestors, Book reviews, Inspiration, Personal historian, Photos, Preservation
Tagged books, family stories, Inspiration, keepsakes, Photos, Preservation
So much happens to us all over the years. So much has happened within us and through us. We are to take time to remember what we can about it and what we dare. That’s what taking the time to enter the room (called “Remember”) means, I think. It means taking time to remember on purpose. It means not picking up a book for once or turning on the radio, but letting the mind journey gravely, deliberately, back through the years that have gone by but are not gone. It means a deeper, slower kind of remembering; it means remembering as a searching and finding. The room is there for all of us to enter if we choose.
Frederick Buechner, from Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons
I like Buechner’s phrase “to remember on purpose”. It says to me that engaging in the recording of our life story or that of another is not a frivolous undertaking. It’s serious work. It requires that we take the time to reflect on life’s journey and by so doing not only leave a legacy but a clearer understanding of self.
Will you enter the room called “Remember”?
Photo by Max R
Posted in Life stories, Personal historian, Preservation, Writing
Tagged Frederick Buechner, life writing, preserving, quote, reflection
Thanks to Denise Olson at Family Matters for pointing out the value of Flickr for family history projects. If you don’t already know, Flickr is a web based application which allows you to upload, edit, archive and share your photographs with others. The basic account is simple to set up and free. For a modest $25 a year, you can get a Flickr Pro account with unlimited space. I discovered Flickr when I was writing my mother’s life story. It was perfect for uploading her photographs and organizing them into groups. I could even edit and clean up some of the more damaged pictures. To me, Flickr’s great value is that it provides a secure place to keep your treasured photos. You no longer have to fear that should your hard drive crash, all your photos will be wiped out.
Of value too are Flickr groups:
Groups are a way for people to come together around a common interest, be it a love of small dogs, a passion for food, a recent wedding or an interest in exploring photographic techniques. And if you can’t find a group which interests you, it’s super-easy to start your own.
Groups can either be public, public (invite only) or completely private. Every group has a pool for sharing photos and videos and a discussion board for talking.
Flickr has 36 million users and an assortment of groups of particular interest to personal historians. Here’s a sample:
If you want to organize and manage your family, check out Flickr. You won’t be disappointed.
Photo by Mohammad Tajer
Posted in Editing, How to, Life stories, Photos, Preservation, Resources, Tips
Tagged Editing, family history, flickr, photo organization, photo sharing
If you don’t know your history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.
Michael Crichton - (1942 – 2008) American author, producer, director, screenwriter and physician
We live in a world that prizes speed, innovation, newness and youth. We’re constantly looking forward. And in the process we’ve become strangers to our past. We’ve either never heard our family stories or forgotten many of them. We pay a price for this. We feel rootless, unconnected and at our deepest core anxious and unhappy.
Recording and preserving our stories is not some flight of nostalgia. It is in fact a determined act to reclaim our history.
Photo by justneal
Posted in Ancestors, Life stories, Preservation, Writing
Tagged family stories, memories, Michael Crichton, preserving, quote, rootless
To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.
- Chinese proverb
How many of you can name all of your eight great grandparents? That’s the question posed by Dr. Barry Baines at one of his Ethical Will Workshops. I must admit I can only name one. How about you? Probably very few – right? Think for a moment. If you don’t do something to preserve and record your life story then your children’s grandchildren will not know your name. Pretty sobering isn’t it? What are you doing to ensure that your name isn’t forgotten?
Photo by David Fielke
Posted in Ancestors, Life stories, Preservation, Quotes, Writing
Tagged Ancestors, Dr. Barry Baines, Great Grandparents, life story, Preservation, quote, remembering
My great uncle George's daughters, Fan & Kit
My mom is ninety. Her mind is clear but she has congestive heart failure and we both know that her time is limited. With her death goes the knowledgeable custodian of several boxes of old sepia colored photographs of relatives long passed. With a sense of urgency we’ve embarked on a methodical recording and preserving of these photos. If you’re in a similar situation you might find what we’re doing of some value.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to get those old family photos out of storage and begin the work of archiving them. Let me know what you’re doing to preserve your family photos. Love to hear from you!
Posted in Ancestors, How to, Photos, Preservation, Tips
Tagged archival, How to, Photos, Preservation, Tips
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