I have a ton of negatives in a box in my crawl space. Most of them are 35mm, but I also have a bunch of 35mm slides and even an envelope full of 110 shots.
Over the years, I’ve thought about scanning in the prints or even the negatives so I could have them archived digitally, but every time I attempted it I decided it was a ton of work that would take up time I simply didn’t have. As a result, I managed to scan in some photos as one-offs, but having everything in my collection in digital form was elusive.
One of Lisa’s friends blogged about an online service called ScanCafe, whose prices are reasonable (24¢ per image) and provides scans with excellent quality (3000 dpi). I was intrigued, so I went through my box ‘o’ negatives and picked a bunch of samples and tried out the service.
Here’s how it works: You pick out the negatives you want to have scanned– they’re initially scanned at the negative strip level, not the individual photo level– and put them in a plastic ziplock bag or an envelope, then pack them in a box. You enter your account information on ScanCafe’s site, they give you a UPS shipping label to print out, and you pay for 50% of the images you’re sending in.
A few weeks later, you’ll receive an email from ScanCafe with a link to thumbnails of the initial scans, then you select the images you want them to scan and put on a DVD for you. Add a few more weeks, and a box shows up at your door with your original negatives and a DVD with your selected photos in digital form.
I chose photos across several years. The shot at the top was taken in 1998, and the one below was a 35mm slide that was shot in my back yard in 1976.

I have to admit the quality is pretty good, better than I could have done with my Epson scanner at home. I had about 120 images scanned, and they all turned out very nice.
The scanning is all done at ScanCafe’s facility in Bangalore, India, with the company’s California address acting as a dispatch/coordination center. This contributes to the lead times– in reality, it took about two months from the time I sent in the negatives to the time the DVD showed up.
As I think about my next order, I may choose photos from a certain period– perhaps two or three years’ worth at a time– and have them scanned so sorting the images at the receiving end is less of a task. Right now, the images jump around from year to year.
If you’re looking for a hands-off solution to digitizing your photos, ScanCafe is a service to seriously consider.