Reddit reviews Epson Perfection V600 Color Photo, Image, Film, Negative & Document Scanner

NO lamination.

Gaylord Archival supply sells on Amazon and are a good company. Hit up your family for gift cards to Amazon to help defray costs as this stuff is expensive.

Paper can be stored in archival folders (they look like manilla or white ones but are acid-free) or poly folders. (FYI, I blow through tons of these from B&H, they seem more affordable than the gaylord ones.)

Put anything fragile in the poly sleeves, as close to the size as you can. (Or, in other words, don't let it bounce around in a sleeve that it too big, nor be damaged by one that is too small).

ONLY buy poly folders that are PAT" passed. It will be in the description or a little logo and is the only certification that matters. You will see all kinds of "archival-friendly" terms which are meaningless.

I put my tintypes in a photo sleeve and then into a box. Between each, I put a piece of felt (craft store) or heavy acid-free paper so they don't scratch each other.

Newspaper is the most frustrating as no matter what you do, it will continue to yellow and become brittle. The acids in the paper destroy it form within and only de-acidifying will slow it. But this is expensive and may destroy the piece. Make newspaper your scanning priority.

If you protect the individual items you can skip, for now, the super-expensive archival boxes and use regular boxes. As long as the items are safe, in a climate controlled environment, have pretty even temperature year-round, and no smoke, regular boxes are fine. Invest in protecting each item first—that will give you more bang for your buck.

BTW, a flatbed scanner works GREAT for scanning tintypes. Just invest in a stand-alone scanner with the highest resolution you can find. The kind attached to a printer is not made for photos and not worth scanning with. I like this model as it scans slides and negatives, too.

Scan documents at minimum of 300ppi (archives scan at 600ppi) and photos at minimum of 600ppi. The smaller the image the higher resolution you should scan. Save images as TIF or PNG, not JPG.

Also buy some back-up drives and/or a cloud subscription. You will chew up hard drive space but hard drives are cheap. Backups and cloud storage insures that you are protected in case your hard drive dies (which they do) or your house burns down.

Lastly, you can buy cotton gloves but many archives now prefer clean hands to gloves. When wearing gloves, it is almost impossible to feel what you are grabbing, and very easy to damage paper. Wash your hands well before handling materials and you should be fine.

Source: I'm an archivist(ish—still in school).

UPDATE: Had wrong B&H link. Fixed.

I recently got the Epson Perfection V600 and it's wonderful. I do some film photography on the side and this comes with negative holders for scanning, so it's great for preserving images from negatives as well. Lots of scan settings too, letting you pick exactly how detailed you want your scans to be.

V600, https://www.amazon.com/Epson-Perfection-Negative-Document-Scanner/dp/B002OEBMRU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479266862&sr=8-1&keywords=epson+v600

Just buy this. It's a great investment and a really great scanner too.

Epson Perfection V600
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002OEBMRU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Do it yourself!

You can get a developing tank/reels, look into Patterson tanks (Here are ebay listings), then you'd need either a light tight closet (which is what I use) or a changing bag (here), then all you need is a few small things (containers, funnel, thermometer) and of course chemicals and you're good! There's even phone apps that walk you through everything!

The only major expense would be a scanner, you can get a good one for $200 new (here) or there are alternative scanning techniques that involve a DSLR with a macro lens and some DIY cardboard set-ups.

Also, contrary what a lot of people say color film developing is not harder at all! Some say it's easier. The difference is the chemicals must be heated to 102 degree instead of 68 degree that b&w film develops at!

If this interests you at all feel free to ask questions about anything, including chemical type and I'll try and help out!

but bottom line, once you get the equipment you're paying almost nothing to develop your film. The chemicals are extremely cheap and most of them have a good shelf life!

Epson Perfection V600

>The issue is that we have no idea if a regular developer will be able to get them developed.

If you can see them, they're already developed.

As for digitizing them, you'll hae a couple options:

• Any decent photo lab would be able to scan them in for you, but it can take a bit of time and money (it would be $0.65 to $1 a frame in my neck of the woods).
  
  
• You can do it yourself with any decent camera and proper backlighting. I was able to get this from the sample image you posted. If you were to hold it flat, with even light all across from behind, and use a high resolution camera. Some simple tweaking in photoshop will get you pretty desirable results (if you can't work photoshop, and want to go this route, let me know and I can do the tweaking for you).
  
  
• My preferred route is through the use of a film scanner. You can find dedicated ones for different sizes, but for archival purposes, I always recommend a flatbed with appropriate inserts. An Epson V600 or CanoScan 9000F II would be good models to look at. They'll come with template inserts for various types of film and have appropriate backlighting built in. The nice thing about these is they'll work with most types of negatives, in addition to regular photos and documents (it's always nice to have a scanner).

I have an older version of this:

https://www.amazon.com/Epson-Perfection-Negative-Document-Scanner/dp/B002OEBMRU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494538591&sr=8-1&keywords=epson+film+scanner

You need to get a film holder as well (if it doesn't come with it):
https://www.amazon.com/Epson-Perfection-V600-Negative-Positive/dp/B011Z47MCI/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1494538591&sr=8-7&keywords=epson+film+scanner


Basically - they're a regular flatbed scanner, but instead of having the light shine from below (for documents), they also have another light above that shines down through the film to illuminate it.

Flatbed scanners tend to be the cheapest. Take a look at the Canoscan 9000F Mk II or the Epson V600.

I use the Epson Perfection V600. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002OEBMRU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Basically any Epson with a lid that lifts is going to do the trick. The V600 lifts up about an inch. My sketchbooks fit fine, with minimal light leakage. They have such a good reputation with artists, I figure it's worth the money. Mine's been running perfectly for 2 years now and it's amazing the level of detail it picks up.

Yes! I forgot to add this. I bought the V600. It's $200, but it's pretty nice. You can get nice, cheap, compact ones too, but I had used this before, so I was more comfortable shelling out the extra cash for it.

Hmm, are there any good, large scanners?

This one looks ideal for uploading drawings, but it can't scan any large papers.

Do you know any quality scanners that cover 18 x 24's?

I don't suppose that it's possible to use a different software instead of Silverfast? Or do all scanned images have to go through the Silverfast software first?

Edit: Also, how would you say a scanner like that compares to one such as this?

I have a couple boxes of old photos to scan. I only have some of the negatives for the photos, so I was thinking about sending those out to a service and then just scanning the prints myself. I'm wondering if the Epson V600 is a good enough scanner for what is mostly 4x6 and smaller prints. Budget is ~$400 but I haven't really found a medium between the $200 scanners and the $800 ones. What do you guys think I should get?

I'm gonna start developing for the first time in a couple of weeks, any tips for first timers? Also, I've been looking at this V600 for my scanning needs, so any thoughts?

https://www.amazon.com/Epson-Perfection-Negative-Document-Scanner/dp/B002OEBMRU/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3LY7L1QUB35HT&keywords=flatbed+scanner+for+slides+and+negatives&qid=1568033957&s=gateway&sprefix=flatbed+scanner+for+neg%2Caps%2C127&sr=8-4

i have the epson v600 and it does a pretty good job for scanning film and slides. my only complaints are with the software. when scanning in film the auto color correction software really sucks. the good news is that you can adjust it manually, but it just takes time.

Ive heard software can automatically detect multiple photos in 1 scan, crop, clean, correct, ect. Just make it as smooth and quick as possible.
A device like this comes with such software.
https://www.amazon.com/Epson-Perfection-Negative-Document-Scanner/dp/B002OEBMRU/ref=sr_1_4?s=office-electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1509816457&sr=1-4&keywords=photo+scanner&dpID=41IlplQtMiL&preST=_SX300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

Maybe I should just get that, it has higher scan resolution, and maybe it would be useful to do some negatives or slides too...

The Epson V600 is a go to for home scanning. I'm going to be picking up one myself in the near future.