Going Digital – The Holy Grail of Photography, Film and Video is a 4 part consumer education series by ScanDigital’s President, Anderson Schoenrock. The purpose of the series is to help educate customers on the process of transferring their photos, slides, negatives and film to digital.

If your family is anything like mine, we have boxes upon boxes of precious family photos sitting in a closet in a spare bedroom. We have everything organized into shoeboxes or small plastic containers. Years and years of memories, roll after roll lined up on a set of shelves.

I have been so busy building this business that it was only recently that I finally got around to organizing my own materials to be converted into digital. A few months ago I pulled everything out of the closet and decided what was worth preserving and what I didn’t need. A common question at this stage: do I send in my photos or negatives? In most cases, the answer is the negatives. Assuming the negatives have been kept in a dark box somewhere these will provide the best digital image. Because the prints were taken from the negatives, scanning those is similar to taking a copy of a copy. We can still obtain a great digital photo from prints, but well preserved negatives are the way to go if available.

Next I went through everything. Decided which photos I wanted to keep and which I didn’t care about. Not surprisingly, I wanted to keep most of it. Except a few obviously poor shots, everything else I wanted to keep.

I labeled my envelopes and put everything back in a box to bring into the office. The process was pretty straightforward and didn’t take to much time.

Next up were my old home videos. This was even easier, I just pulled out all my old VHS tapes to bring in and a handful of 8 mm reels from my early years. Again, I just wanted everything converted.

I did not give myself special treatment in our queue, but just put the order in as our customers do. About a week later I had all my photos in digital and within 2 weeks had all of my video transferred into digital format.

On thing that I really liked was our hard drive option. I now have everything on a neat little USB drive. Storage prices continue to come down while storage space is becoming even smaller. I now have 160 GB worth of photos, video and music on something that can fit in my pocket and requires no more power than what can be supplied from my Macbook.

Transferring my old materials brings numerous benefits, not to mention it freed up a ton of space in my closet. It is time to say goodbye to those old shoeboxes and slide carousels in your basement! My materials are no longer trapped in these out of date formats, they’re now in digital where they can be shared, enjoyed and preserved forever!

Next Up: Part 2 – The Dangers of Leaving Your Materials In Out of Date Formats

Having lived away from home for almost 12 years now, I rarely have the opportunity to spend Mother’s Day with my mom. With one son on the West Coast and another on the East Coast, my mom usually receives something in the mail from us. Lucky for my brother and I, our parents encouraged us to move away from home and expand our horizons. They’re proud of what we’re doing now and never sweat us being away for Mother’s Day, birthdays…etc. (We do all typically spend Christmas and Thanksgiving together).

Each year my brother and I coordinate our gift for Mom. We’ve exhausted the flower option and there really is not much my Mom wants / needs. This creates our annual Mother’s Day Dilemma… What to send home for Mother’s Day?

Usually we’re both so busy that the holiday creeps up and then we have a Thursday before Mother’s Day scramble, but this year we’re on top of it. My brother called me on Sunday afternoon with a gameplan. I quickly explained that I had also been thinking about Mother’s Day a lot this year because we were receiving Mother’s Day orders at ScanDigital and were even running some Mother’s Day Specials. (Spoiler ALERT: Mom, if you’re reading this before Sunday, please stop and come back later!) I then went on to explain my plan: Let’s take all of our family photos and pre-load them onto one of the new ScanDigital Photo Frames. My brother quickly agreed this was an excellent plan and so it was decided.

Over the past couple of days I’ve been working on pulling together a bunch of family photos to load on the frame. It has been a great time and a great reason to enjoy all those family vacation memories. I think Mom is going to love the frame and I am thrilled that earlier this year she sent in a bunch of our family photos to be scanned. We scanned some negatives and slides from our trip to Europe in 1991 that turned out to be real winners. My Mom is still in the process of organizing a new batch dating back to the 1980s to be scanned. I can’t wait to see those. It will be fun to load these onto the frame as the family’s collection is archived and preserved digitally. I’m excited for the first time in a few years to be able to give my Mom a gift that is new and hip. This is sure to top the casserole dish we gave her last year! Here are some of my favorites for the frame:

How we ever convinced Mom to touch this pigeon, I’ll never know
(St. Mark’s Square, Venice, Italy)

Mom is usually fairly calm, but couldn’t help being nervous while I rode on the back of a motorcycle on the Autobahn at 12 years old
(Aufham, Germany)

EuroDisney was a much needed break from all the historical sites
(EuroDisney outside Paris, France)

All that site seeing was pretty exhausting.
(Backseat of our rental car on the way to
another Western European town)