I have all my photos from childhood until now as regular hard copies.

I have negatives for some of them.

I would like to convert all these photos to digital copies so that I can store them on DVDs & Hard drive.

What is the best way to do this so that I can get fairly good copies without giving up too much quality ?

Thank You.

Use a scanner.

If you don't have one, Walmart has one you can use, for a price which is reasonable.

If you have any Thrift stores in your area, you can pick up a scanner for about $10, at least that's what we sell then for.

You could also pay someone to do this for you but I don't know what that would cost. Many photo stores do this and places like Kinko's or similar.

This post has been edited by Ztruker: Mar 27 2008, 07:08 PM

Any suggestions on kind of scanner & dpi & format etc ?

Most scanners have the capability to allow you to alter the DPI. They are pretty much all the same.
I would get one that allows you to scan negatives and slides.
I have been experimenting with some of my parents slides, pictures, and negatives. I am finding that a negative is a little better (based on what I can visually see). Same goes with a slide (also a negative).
You will find you can now take them (digitally) in to a picture program and alter color, darness, etc.

I just did such job on my childhood pictures. I had photos which I wanted co scan and convert to files. When I asked for the price in some photo shops (I had about 80 pictures) I found that for the price of the scan I could buy a new all-in-one (An HP, for about 110$). So I bought the machine, scanned the pictures and improved the quality somewhat with Picassa. Fast and clean, no quality lost, even gained.

BUT when I tried to scan 35 mm colour slides the quality was very poor, even when I ran the machine on 1200 DPI (it takes a lot of time for every slide). Sometimes ago I researched for scanners specifically made for this purpose. They are expensive and I have no experience with them. You can ask in a photos hop how much they charge for the job and then make your calculations (price is quality dependent. If you wish higher resolution you pay more. Where I live they wanted about 1.25$ per slide!!)

I have an HP 4570 that has the 35 mm attachment and it did a fairly good job. The only issue was on the real old slides, I couldn't blow them up without sacrificing the quality. With newer slides I could blow them up more without losing.