Duchy777,
I have been working on the 50,000 old photos for ~15 years — I just work on it periodically when I want to. That way it becomes more of a hobby rather than a chore. I bought a Nikon film/slide scanner when I started the project (they longer make the scanner) and use a flatbed scanner for the photos with no film. I also have a ScanSnap iX500 that I use for document scanning — it is an amazing scanner! I have scanned all my parent’s and grandparent’s letters and postcards to preserve for future generations (plus current important documents to get rid of all my office “paper”).
Scanning the old photos is actually not a huge part of the time I spend on the project. Most of the time is spent gathering information for photos, identifying the people, location, date, adding a description, then adding keywords so the photos are gathered in “smart galleries.” I will typically have from 5 to 15 galleries per year, depending on how many photos are available for that year.
I include all this information in the photo so I can locate the photos on a map, by date, person, etc. Aperture adds the “face names” as keywords on export — which is one reason I want to finish the project in Aperture. All this “imbedded information” makes the photos independent of a specific photo program. Any decent photo DAM will use the embedded location, date, description and keywords. I use the old letters to help determine all this information, then write a yearly narrative of family events. All of this is interesting to me, so it makes it more of an enjoyable hobby than a chore. There are many different “chores” to complete this, so I don’t get bored doing one thing for a long period of time. I just complete one year at a time so I cycle through these various chores every couple months. I have learned a great deal about my parents, grandparents, etc. while completing this project. The photos have much more meaning to me after I went through all this. Also, my kids can have this as a permanent record of their heritage. They can look at a photo of a “stranger” and it will now mean something to them.
Anyway, my point is that preserving the photos can actually be an enjoyable hobby if you enjoy doing the kind of family research I am into. If that is not your “thing,” scanning the photos in a quick and easy manner — like using the ScanSnap — is a fantastic way to easily preserve photos that may otherwise be lost in a shoebox in the basement!
