Ok for one reason or another I have become the family historian. As such I have hundreds of photographs of the family dating as far back as the 1920s. Some of them are old and frail, while some of em are old but in great shape. I'm thinking that I wants to scan all of them in for posterities sake. The issue I have though is that with a traditional flat bed scanner I could see this consuming months of what little free time that I have. Is there a quicker way to scan them in? Is there a SOHO high quality scanner where I can drop the photos in a hopper and let it do its thing? Or should I pay some place to scan them in based on the sheer volume?
Pay somewhere I had to do that about 4 years ago as a favour for a mate... took much longer than i thought and was a reaaaal pain in the ass. There isnt any shortcuts, unless you have uniform photos and a machine that can auto-process.... Leave it to someone else and pay them
For the frail ones, you're going to want to do them by hand with a flatbed scanner. Meanwhile, I believe there are scanners out there that will happily accept a stack of photos, slot through each one of them, and scan them per your settings. However, unless you plan on doing this frequently, not sure they're worth the cost for a home user. So yes, scan any damaged or otherwise priceless photos yourself, but let a photo place handle the rest.
