My mom loves to take pictures. She always had a camera with her to make sure that every moment of our childhood was captured. As a result we have tubs and tubs full of pictures hiding in a closet. My goal was to get all these pictures digitized and backed up. Sending them to a scanning service was both very expensive and something we didn’t want to trust a shipping company with. I have heard rumors of people that sent pictures to a US based company only to find out that their pictures were sent to China to save the company money.

To start scanning, we originally purchased a flatbed scanner, but at nearly 30-45 seconds a picture, it was just way too much to really dive in and do a lot of pictures in a short amount of time. When there is 3-4 thousand pictures to go through and scan in, a little research can go a long way.

I found the way to go is by using a high-speed document scanner. Here were my requirements:

  • Full color 600 dpi scanning
  • Fast scanning
  • Double side capacity (so we get those dates and notes on the back of photos)
  • Under $500

When I started looking, I found many different great document scanners on Amazon. The problem in general with document scanners is that they we not designed to scan in photos. The feed rollers and separation pads are optimized to grab pieces of paper, not glossy photos. Most of the reviews for the top bestselling scanners indicate they are excellent at scanning regular documents, but are horrible at scanning photos. This is mostly due to the fact that the higher resolution scans are unforgiving to streaks, dust, scratches, and other blemishes. If a speck of dust or dirt gets on the lens of the glass, pictures develop streaks all the way down the photo.

After looking high and low for a high speed photo scanner, I found the Kodak s1220 Photo Scanning system from a YouTube video filmed at an electronics show. It features double-sided scanning, auto-straightening, and of course, fast scanning of photos. The one real downside to using this scanner is that it retails for $1600 which was a deal-breaker for me. It did however meet all of my other requirements and had a lot of great features. There is really not a lot of competitors for high speed photo scanners right now, so nothing is really driving the price down.

After a little more research and looking at comments on Amazon, I found out that the Kodak s1220 photo scanning system is really just some pretty software coupled with an i1220 Kodak document scanner (yup, they actually send you an i1220 instead of an s1220). This scanner has the same exact specifications as the s1200, but is nearly $900 cheaper! That’s some pretty expensive software. There’s also a single sided scanner called the i1210 document scanner that is even cheaper if you don’t want double sided scanning. I also just noticed that my neighborhood Target has a i1220 “rebranded” scanner in the photo section hooked up to one of those photo kiosks.

With all this research, I went ahead found a broken i1220 document scanner for a few hundred bucks on eBay, fixed it up, and downloaded Kodak’s free Capture Lite software. Like many document scanners, the higher the resolution, the slower the scans, but I found that this model scanned documents faster than I could take pictures out of the albums. As a extra, it scanned regular documents in blazing speeds (plus it did both sides) at 45ppm.

Pros:

  • Double-sided duplex scanning
  • Fast full 600 dpi (1200dpi interlaced) scanning resolution
  • Rollers are designed in a way that doesn’t scratch photos
  • Software auto-corrects “dust” lines and straightens pictures automatically
  • Blank documents are removed automatically (when doing double-sided scanning, this is a key feature to have)
  • Price was acceptable if purchased refurbished or used

Cons:

  • Windows or Linux only (I’m a Mac fan so this bugs me)
  • Capture lite software included can be quite overwhelming to figure out at first and requires a 32-bit system (because of the required software for the “key” if you use a s1220)
  • Doesn’t do slides or negatives
  • Parts from Kodak.com are way overpriced and their customer service/tech support is absolutely terrible. Let me reiterate this, the RMA process at Kodak for their document imaging process is one of the worst customer service experiences I’ve ever had. If you need to order a part, triple check it is the right part and expect a long 3-4 week wait to return anything even if it is Kodak’s fault.

Tips for scanning using a document feeder.

  • I found that by putting RainX on the glass, dust was repelled and didn’t require a swipe of the glass as often
  • Getting a can of air can really help reduce the dust, hair, and lint on pictures
  • Showing a preview of the pictures using the Capture Lite software allowed you to quickly find any blemishes
  • Scanning photos twice (flipping the photos over after the batch and re-scanning) saved time because if you found a blemish or something wrong with the photo, it was really easy to find it’s “twin” and just replace the bad photo instead of finding and scanning the original picture
  • Tag people in photos using software such as Picasa or iPhoto. You can then give a DVD of every picture that specific person was in
  • Try and keep things as organized as possible. Tackling a dozen pictures is much easier than organizing hundreds
  • If you use a different document scanner (and there’s a bunch of different quality ones out there), be sure that the pictures do not scratch on the pickup roller/separation pad when going through the scanner. Some scanners include a plastic “protector” sheet. I think this is pointless. Who wants to put pictures in a plastic sheet before the scan (and subsequently remove each picture after the scan).