Most copy shops have equipment and capabilities that are superior to home equipment.
Especially for a One-Time-Need.  I'd have some else do that kind of work including printing out pdf manuals.
For occasional use on the road: 

Interesting thread, but I don't see any suggestions that address the eight hundred lb. gorilla on my bucket list. I have about 25,000 negatives that need to be digitized and archived for my family. I'm not comfortable letting physically go of them to another person/location/country, not only because of the cost, but because they are, by their nature, irreplaceable. Is there any reasonable solution other than a very expensive film scanner and the next ten years or so of my life? Jay

  On 3/21/2018 at 5:53 AM, Jaydrvr said:

Interesting thread, but I don't see any suggestions that address the eight hundred lb. gorilla on my bucket list. I have about 25,000 negatives that need to be digitized and archived for my family. I'm not comfortable letting physically go of them to another person/location/country, not only because of the cost, but because they are, by their nature, irreplaceable. Is there any reasonable solution other than a very expensive film scanner and the next ten years or so of my life? Jay

I think that you've created a difficult scenario for yourself. If you won't physically let go of the negatives, then you'll have to do them yourself. No matter how you go about doing that, it will take you an considerable amount of time to scan that number of images, and that assumes that you purchase an auto-feed film negative scanner, which is a pretty specialized piece of equipment. 

Your other choice is to let a commercial firm have the negatives (which is something that people do every. single. day.) and pay them to do the job. 

  On 3/21/2018 at 6:13 AM, mptjelgin said:

I think that you've created a difficult scenario for yourself. If you won't physically let go of the negatives, then you'll have to do them yourself. No matter how you go about doing that, it will take you an considerable amount of time to scan that number of images, and that assumes that you purchase an auto-feed film negative scanner, which is a pretty specialized piece of equipment. 

Your other choice is to let a commercial firm have the negatives (which is something that people do every. single. day.) and pay them to do the job. 

To clarify, I'm not unwilling to turn the project over to someone who can guarantee they're doing the work on-site, if I can properly vet them and look them in the eyes when I hand over the first batch. I'm willing to risk natural disasters, etc., if I'm dealing with a reputable firm, but not FedEx, et. al. Just trying to minimize risk.

You probably want a professional photo lab to start with.  (And not the one-hour labs either).
Larger urban areas often have a pro lab than can do metal prints, giclee prints, etc.  Find one of those.  Ask if they do it in-house or send it out.  Leg work next. . .

  On 3/21/2018 at 8:47 AM, Rich&Sylvia said:

You probably want a professional photo lab to start with.  (And not the one-hour labs either).
Larger urban areas often have a pro lab than can do metal prints, giclee prints, etc.  Find one of those.  Ask if they do it in-house or send it out.  Leg work next. . .

 

Excellent suggestion.. Thank you. I'll begin research..

I had several thousand color slides and used Costco to get them digitized. They weren't cheap but did have specials every month of so that kept the cost down. Everything was delivered on CD's and the quality was excellent.

For prints we have a Cannon Pixma 6600 photo quality scanner/printer which does not stream feed. We found that with the 2 of us working together. One loading the scanner and the other operating the computer we could scan a lot of pictures fairly quickly. To avoid burnout we did 2 hours at a time and spread it over a week or so. The cannon will scan multiple pictures loaded at one time as individual so long as there is about 1/8" of separation at the edges.

The best thing about digitizing those old pictures is that you can share them so easily. We're the heroes on Facebook now because we're the only ones who have the pictures from our younger days!! 

We carry the Cannon with us on our travels I draw and paint and it's great for printing 8 x 10 pictures t use for painting references.

BnB

  On 3/21/2018 at 9:06 PM, scouserl41 said:

I had several thousand color slides and used Costco to get them digitized. They weren't cheap but did have specials every month of so that kept the cost down. Everything was delivered on CD's and the quality was excellent.

For prints we have a Cannon Pixma 6600 photo quality scanner/printer which does not stream feed. We found that with the 2 of us working together. One loading the scanner and the other operating the computer we could scan a lot of pictures fairly quickly. To avoid burnout we did 2 hours at a time and spread it over a week or so. The cannon will scan multiple pictures loaded at one time as individual so long as there is about 1/8" of separation at the edges.

The best thing about digitizing those old pictures is that you can share them so easily. We're the heroes on Facebook now because we're the only ones who have the pictures from our younger days!! 

We carry the Cannon with us on our travels I draw and paint and it's great for printing 8 x 10 pictures t use for painting references.

BnB

  On 3/21/2018 at 8:47 AM, Rich&Sylvia said:

You probably want a professional photo lab to start with.  (And not the one-hour labs either).
Larger urban areas often have a pro lab than can do metal prints, giclee prints, etc.  Find one of those.  Ask if they do it in-house or send it out.  Leg work next. . .

 

Thanks, this gives me more to go on. Had NO idea Costco did this!

I see Costco is only scanning slides at 600 dpi.. That's really low.

For document scanning I use a Fujitsu similar to a FI-7160 with Adobe.  For slides and old MM movies, as well as pictures I dropped off at a local business that converted the pictures & Slides to CD's.  They did a stand up job.

David