it comes in pints?

See, what I get from that photo is that you had to be taught to put both wheels on the ground before riding your bike. ;)

I love the shot of your dad with his parents. Such a classic view of that era.

Are those EASTER BASKETS on your brothers' heads?

I've been debating getting a scanner for a while, even more so lately b/c my aunt sent me a picture featuring me at age 3 on my uncle's Yamaha motorcycle (in my dress with hairbow!)--does anybody have any recommendations?

I have a Lexmark X83 three-in-one printer/scanner. Pretty happy with it. Other than that, I don't know anything about scanners.

And yes, they are Easter baskets/army helmets (subtype air conditioned).

Classic photos, Ken!

Kate, the real trick in getting a scanner is getting enough resolution to do a decent job, in color....without getting skinned alive. Mine is a 3-in-1 model is well (HP, though) which I picked up off of eBay.

And, of course, getting decent archiving software. Eventually, you'll want to share them, which means printing and/or burning CDs or DVDs.

All of which is far to extensive to discuss here....especially as my scanning project has been hold for a couple years, and I badly need to update the software. So I'm a bit dated here. ;-D

Easter baskets/army helmets. . . sounds like boys to me!

Thanks for the tips, fellas. Jeff, I confess I keep ordering prints from Snapfish and they're still waiting to go in albums. I'm worried my niece and nephews will need baby/family pictures for school projects and their parents won't have any. Their wedding album would still exist solely on Snapfish if my mom hadn't put together an album. (And I was recently given a digital camera as a gift and I have NO CLUE how to use it!)

Kate,

When I was contemplating buying a scanner, I wanted one that was dedicated to slides and negatives, figuring that would do a better job. But the one I wanted (Nikon Coolscan) was around $500, which I couldn't afford.

So I looked around and finally bought a Canon CanoScan 8600, which was less than $200 just after it came out. This is a flatbed scanner that has a light in the lid for negatives and slides, and special frames to put them in. That turned out to be a good alternative, since now I have all these old family photos, plus some of my own where the negatives have wandered off. Plus things like my postcards and currency collections, etc.

We have a big HP printer/scanner/copier/fax, but it doesn't do nearly as good a job on prints as the CanoScan.

The only problem is that it's hella slow for very high resolution, taking 11 minutes per negative (or slide) frame. But that's for best quality, highest resolution (overkill resolution, really). I only use that setting for negatives which are good enough to possibly make posters out of one day.

As far as I can tell, the consensus is the 3200dpi is the limit of resolution on a negative, so anything above that is wasted. (It'll be lower for prints, of course.) Besides resolution, the other thing to look for is the optical density (the D factor). This is a measure of the contrast the scanner is capable of -- the ratio (or something) between the lightest and darkest parts of the image. You'd think that would be the same thing as the color depth, but as I recall it's not. More D is better, but manufacturers are often, um, optimistic about the optical depth their scanners can achieve.

I chose the CanoScan because I read all the Amazon reviews on scanners, and this one was almost universally well-liked. (Well, the 8400 was -- I waited until I could get the slightly-better 8600. There's an 8800 out now.)

The other thing you'll want is software that will remove scratches and dust. Your better scanners come with that, but some programs are more equal than others. (Some scanners have the capability to scan the photo first with infrared light, then compare that to the optical scan to look for dust and scratches.) I hear Digitial ICE is very good; the CanoScan comes with some other program built in. It works OK. Smudges and dust on the scanner have been a bigger problem than scratches and dust on the negatives.

(Sorry for the verbosity.)

The average, off-the-shelf scanner today will provide you with ample resolution for the average consumer. Unless you have to do very high-res scans for very large reproductions, anything over 300 dpi is overkill.

The real question you need to ask yourself is what is the primary use of the scanner going to be? If you want to digitize your aging hard-copy photos, you probably want to look into a scanner that has bundled software with good batch processing functions.

If you're just going to be scanning an image here or there, you can afford to go the economy route.

Almost any product by Canon, HP, Nikon, or any known brand is going to provide decent results.

Great stuff, thank you all!!! I'm going to print this off for reference. I love having a birthday late in the year, 'cause then you can talk people into big ticket item b-day/Christmas presents.