Many of us know of at least one or two of our relatives have a large collection of old photo albums or boxes of pictures and negatives. With the passage of time, photos can fade and negatives can become brittle and hard to reproduce. There are ways to preserve these bits of family history in digital form, so that they can be enjoyed by present and future generations
The topic of digitizing old family photos and negatives also points to a great gift idea or two for the family photo packrat in your family. There are devices available that enable you to scan old photos and negatives into digital form. There are also photo and negative scanning services that will do all of that scanning for you. I have decided to examine both of these options so that you can decide which is best for you.
My dad is a photo packrat. He has tons of photos and negatives from when my sister and I were growing up. Some of them I would rather never see the light of day, but it is wonderful that he captured so many moments of our younger years. Last Christmas, my sister gave him a device that he could use to scan the negatives of his photo treasure trove. I could tell that he was excited by the gift, and I wondered whether it would work out well for him. He has been using it, and since scanning negatives takes a bit of time he has steadily been chipping away at his stash a little at a time. If you are interested in getting something like this for yourself or someone you know, look around online and read some reviews to see what model fits your needs. I am not sure which one my dad has, but some brand names that I have seen are Wolverine, HP, and Kodak.
If you love the idea of having photos and negatives scanned but have absolutely no time, or if you want to give that service as a gift to someone and you know that they do not have time to do it themselves, you may want to look into one of the photo and negative scanning services that are out there. GoPhoto, Digmyphotos, and Fotobridge are just three of the many options that are available.