Scanning photos is annoying

Since I lost my old digital camera I used a disposable camera and my old compact 35mm camera. This meant that I had a couple of old fashioned printed photos to scan in. It's been so long since I last scanned a batch of photos that I had forgotten what an annoying process it is.

Prints tend to be slightly convex, so when placed on the scanner glass they tend to be in contact with it at only one point. This means that they will rotate about that point at the slightest provocation (like a gentle breeze in the room, or another photo being placed on the glass next to it, or removing one's finger from the photo once one finished placed it just so).

My scanner is just the right size to scan three photos at once, which is great apart from the fact that the sensor area of the scanner is slightly smaller than the glass, and the bottom of the third photo gets cut off. Fortunately it's only a small strip so I decided not to bother rescanning them all.

Then after scanning most of the photos I'll notice that there is a smudge or some dust on the glass which will of course appear in all the photos that I've scanned so far. Hopefully it won't be too noticable.

I am quite impressed at how well the photos came out given that the film in my old camera had been sitting there for the best part of 7 years (I guess it helped that it had been in dark cupboards and drawers for most of that time). I'm also quite impressed at the picture quality you can get from a disposable camera these days - comparable to my old compact 35mm. I guess that even with the rise of digital, 35mm technology has continued to improve. Digital is still so much better though.

I'll post the results of the scanning session here soon.

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