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My parents-in-law are celebrating their 50th anniversary next year and we're looking for a gift idea. If it works well then I'll also plagiarize it for my father's 75th birthday in 2009.
We've noticed that digital frames have come a long way in the last couple years. Our idea was to pull out all our photo albums (filled with prints developed from real film, not digital) and collect 500-1000 of our family shots over the last two-three decades. We'd digitize them and provide the PILs with a digital frame to display the images as well as a few DVDs of the rest. I'm also looking for a service to digitize five hours of VHS video of our daughter's life over the last 14-some years.
Yes, I understand that I could do the job myself and that there are several great ways to do so. I want to spend my time on other projects, though, and we'd prefer to spend the money on having someone else do the scanning. I was mildly concerned about turning our photos over to perfect strangers, but we also have the film negatives and the video has a backup copy so that will all probably work out OK.
We're not trying to be cheap but we're not sure which route is better. Should we go with a local scanning service, presumably with people who know what they're doing and whom we can ride herd on? Or is it better to use one of the national firms that advertises all over the Web? Anyone have advice on the digital frame and the scanning process, or recommendations for a specific service? Is there anything you'd avoid or do differently?
We've noticed that digital frames have come a long way in the last couple years. Our idea was to pull out all our photo albums (filled with prints developed from real film, not digital) and collect 500-1000 of our family shots over the last two-three decades. We'd digitize them and provide the PILs with a digital frame to display the images as well as a few DVDs of the rest. I'm also looking for a service to digitize five hours of VHS video of our daughter's life over the last 14-some years.
Yes, I understand that I could do the job myself and that there are several great ways to do so. I want to spend my time on other projects, though, and we'd prefer to spend the money on having someone else do the scanning. I was mildly concerned about turning our photos over to perfect strangers, but we also have the film negatives and the video has a backup copy so that will all probably work out OK.
We're not trying to be cheap but we're not sure which route is better. Should we go with a local scanning service, presumably with people who know what they're doing and whom we can ride herd on? Or is it better to use one of the national firms that advertises all over the Web? Anyone have advice on the digital frame and the scanning process, or recommendations for a specific service? Is there anything you'd avoid or do differently?
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