Monday, August 27, 2012

Photo scanners

Like many people I have a collection of photographs that need to be scanned if I want to use them online or in other digital projects. Many of the coloured photos taken in the 1960s and 1970s are also beginning to fade and need to be copied now. Our home flatbed scanner has served us well for about 10 years but is now showing its age and scanning is a slow process. I was recently given a Kaiser Baas photo scanner to use when scanning loose photos and single A4 pages. This is a small device that scans images at a resolution of 150, 300 or 600 dpi. It scans colour or black and white items and saves the scanned image as jpg or pdf files. The device is easy to use - plug it in to a power supply, press the On button for a few seconds to turn on the scanner, begin to feed the photo into the device and then press the Scan button. Scanning each image takes only a few seconds and the scanned image is saved on to a SD card in the device. Two protective sleeves come with the unit making it easier to scan smaller items as well as keeping images straight during scanning.

Once the batch of scanning is complete use the USB lead to connect the photo scanner to the computer and then save the scanned images to folders on the computer as required. Scanned images can then be edited, if required, in a photo editor.

The small portable scanner works independently of a computer so would be useful for scanning photographs 'in the field' provided that there is a power supply. For such a project you would need to keep a list of image numbers on a sheet with space for brief information about the scanned image if the photo scanner was used to scan images at places other than at the home base. At the society rooms canning single photographs using a photo scanner could also be a task undertaken by one person while someone else uses the computer for other purposes.

Larger images than A4, images on boards and those in books would still need to be scanned on a flatbed scanner or photographed with a digital camera but a small photo scanner could be a useful tool for scanning single photographs.

1 comment:

Linda said...

I think I am about to invest in a Flip-Pal scanner, which scans to A5 size, but apparently stitches images if necessary. Just to use for postcard size photos in the field. And especially small snapshots in albums, that cannot be removed, as you can put it on top of the image as well.