About our Beginnings
With over 45 years of photography experience and 20 years of working with computers I was amazed that while I was working on my family tree, I discovered that preserving old family photographs was not as straightforward as it sounds. Let’s start with film sizes … I immediately discovered that there was a plethora of film sizes that I had to deal with 35mm,16mm, Minox, Disc, 110, 126 , 127, 620, 120, 9x12CM, 4×5 in, and a bunch of odd sizes in between. Then there was the complication that some films had a variety of different frame sizes making digitizing of all these different medias anything but a straightforward process. I ended up having to deal with digitizing color and black and white prints, color negatives, black and white negatives, color slides or transparencies, 8mm, super – 8, and 16MM movie films. …and then there are the scrapbooks and old style phot albums with captions on the pages. The variety of sizes and mediums made it impossible to digitize our family pictures and scrapbooks through a “commercial big box” digitizing service. (I would not want to anyway – Most were offering low resolution lossy file format images) So here you have it … I founded Family Scans! A service available to you as a direct result of preserving my own genealogy and family history.
We Can handle The Odd Film Sizes
As I started this project, I also looked around to see what was available. I found a myriad of online mega digitizing stores that in reality don’t handle the variety of film sizes and types that one typically runs into archiving the family photos In fact the largest and most notable only scan 35 millimeter film only to leave you out in the cold when it comes to all the other and many time older film sizes that hold your truly precious images and memories.
Scans are “Generally” .jpg or .JPEG files and that is what we to offer as a “Standard” but if you are serious about archiving and saving your images for generations to come then dont Start With .jpg or .jpeg Files. Upgrade to TIFF !
Insist on TIFF, instead of a JPEG or .JPG file.
TIFF (Tagged Information File Format) files are larger more time consuming and therefor more expensive but will not lose any quality or clarity when edited and saved repeatedly. JPEGs, on the other hand, will lose a small amount of quality and clarity each time they are saved. – If you are serious about archiving your pictures then .tif is the only way to go. If you need a JPEG file you can always make one from your original TIFF file (But you can’t go the other way around) When you upgrade to .tiff files with family scans we also make JPEG’s for you as an added service – saving you all the work.
We Offer Fluid Mount Scanning
Wet mount or fluid mount scanning produces a sharper result and the fluid works on the imperfections of your film to help reduce the amount of spotting and touchup work required in post-production however it is a specialized and time consuming process which makes it expensive. There are times that it becomes an absolute necessity for getting a quality scan from some films for a variety of reasons like film size, dust and scratches, the need for absolute edge to edge sharpness, grain reduction and the ability to print massive prints like 48”x72” ! …but there are times this might be right for you. Ask us if you think you might have a need for this specialized service.
About Me
I developed my first roll of film when I was in the fourth grade and I knew from that moment on that photography was going to be a big part of my life – And it is!
Throughout the years my training and skills have brought me to many different areas in both the “Art” and the “Industry”. Photography with its diversity has enabled me to explore many of my artistic whims while at the same time honing my technical skills and business aspirations with many of my other hobbies and interests intertwined; Computers and genealogy to mention a few. So here we are “Family Scans” a culmination of my life’s talents and interests coming to roost in a single place. My passion for photography is what brings you value!