By:
The Dude on the Right
As I’m trying to pay attention to "American Idol" tonight, with the dudes
singing classic songs from the 70’s which so far have been bad renditions of
songs from Fleetwood Mac, Andy Gibb, Queen, Foreigner, and The Carpenters, I’m
also in a quandary because I can’t get my film scanning stuff like I want.
First off, I finally scanned all of my concert negatives, got them digitized in
a decent resolution, and slowly plan to update the photos on the website with
the higher resolution versions I now have. That was the easy part, with my
old HP Photosmart film scanner.
But
then I decided I wanted to start digitizing older photos (like this cute girl on
the right), and old negatives, and post them on the internet for family,
friends, and anyone to see, and I have run into many questions, and many
choices.
As far as posting them on the internet, I started by setting up a
site at Flickr, but I have to say that as much as I like it, and would pay the
yearly fee for unlimited stuff, I am worried about the potential takeover by
Microsoft and what that might mean to the photos I post. I also looked at
maybe using Google’s Picasa instead, but from some quick things I have read
there are some copyright/publicity issues Google might be able to enforce.
And as I was investigating Flickr vs. Google, I came upon a bunch of other sites
that seem to do a similar thing, namely set up family photo albums. I’m so
confused.
Then came the problem of a scanner. My old scanner was an HP
Photosmart S20, which has served me well through the years, but it doesn’t
handle the medium format film that my mom had stored in a box. So, today,
I went to get a new scanner, based on a lot of reviews I read on the internet,
and even though I like the scanner (it’s an Epson), the software for it sucks,
and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend more money for scanning software.
So, sadly, tomorrow, I have to hope the store will take it back, and then I
suppose I’ll go back to an HP scanner (I loved the software that worked with the
Photosmart), I just hope the HP folks kept the same format for the software (or
at least close) that I am used to, and that the scanner works like I need it to.
Now don’t get me wrong, for most people the Epson software will be fine, but for
me, and my photos, it blows (and if the Epson folks want to know why they can
e-mail me), because all I really want to do, before the rest of my older
relatives pass away, is to find out who all of these people are in photos that
are tens, and twenties, and maybe even thirty or forty of years taken before I
was born, and if it takes me that much longer to get the photos digitized and
posted (like the Epson software leaned itself to), those relatives will be dead
before I find out.
If you’ve got any suggestions for digitizing old negatives,
medium format (up to 6 x 12), or if you have an internet site you love for
posting your family scrapbooks, please let me know. Right now I have to
figure out how to box up my Epson scanner I bought, hope the store takes it
back, and then hope again that if I buy the HP version the software will be to
my liking. With my luck the new scanner won’t scan worth a darn but the
software will be great.
That’s it for this one!
I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!