What is Reddit's opinion of Epson FastFoto FF-680W Wireless High-Speed Photo and Document Scanning System, Black?

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I did the same thing a few years ago. Started off with a flatbed and the task became virtually impossible with hundreds of photos. I ended up renting an Epson FF680W. It's got an automated feeder that doesn't bend photos like a traditional feeder does. You can put in about 100 photos at a time and it scanned about a photo ever 2 seconds or so (It's been a few years so I don't remember the details too well). Took me about a week total with removing photos from albums. You can buy it if you have the cash or see you can find a photo scanning shop that will rent one to you. Good luck!

I have had my eye on this for some time:

Epson FastFoto FF-680W Wireless High-Speed Photo and Document Scanning System

But, damn, it's pricey. The quality is supposed to be really good though, and it connects via wi-fi.

u/amandapanda741 I want to make sure you see this comment. I used the same scanner as well to scan 17,000 old family photos. Very worth the price, especially because my family writes notes on the backside of pictures, so the dual scan was a huge time saver. I used the 1st generation with just USB connectivity, and I can only imagine that the second generation at twice the resolution can only be better. If I had one complaint, it would be that I wasn't able to name things exactly how I wanted, but I was being very picky and the software still does a good job of it. Other than that, every feature performed by the printer and software is amazing and definitely worth the money. Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DLX26BB/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_aDOGCbF3Z2ACZ

I recommend one of these if you have that many photos to archive. I would only use the USB 3.0 interface as the wireless works but can be finicky.

Epson FastFoto FF-680W Wireless High-Speed Photo and Document Scanning System, Black https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DLX26BB/

Check out this scanner if you need something that can scan fast and has good quality. It is pricier than some, but I like the results and the time it saves is worth it. If you read reviews ensure you are looking at the updated 680 as Amazon has both under the same listing.

300 DPI 4x6 photos are typically scanned around 1 per second.

Epson FastFoto FF-680W Wireless High-Speed Photo and Document Scanning System, Black https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DLX26BB

I've scanned over 10,000 negatives now so I'll try to give my recommendations.

If you have the negatives/slides/original film, try to scan those first. They have a lot more resolution than the prints.

Prints

Scanning prints is fairly easy, but I'd try to avoid a flatbed as it gets tedious. Epson makes the FastFoto-680 exactly for this. There's also a cheaper 640 version. They're just rebadged and way more expensive document scanners with photo software. They might have better CCDs since it can natively scan at higher resolutions than the comparable ES-500W document scanner which I have. I can scan photos with it once the auto contrast has been dialed back, but they don't include any of their photo specific scanning features with it. It's ridiculously fast though. You could look into using software like VueScan too. That software also works with film scanners... which we'll go into now.

Film

There's tons of options for scanning film. I'll try to do a brief overview of what I'm familiar with.

• The best bang for your buck is probably flatbed scanning. Pick up an Epson V550 or V600. Canon used to have a CanoScan lineup but I think they're discontinued now. You can search up eBay and Craigslist too since flatbeds depreciate nicely but are generally hard to screw up. Most modern flatbeds have Digital ICE which uses an Infared pre-scan to automatically remove dust. It's awesome. Flatbeds are not the best at resolving detail in film, and the included software is often not the best at inverting negatives (though it's usually fine). You can read way too much about this over on FilmScanner.info. Flatbeds generally do their best work on medium format film or larger, though 35mm will still look ok. Ccustom holders, fluid mounting, and ANR glass will make flatbed scans look much better. They can be explored on betterscanning.com. 3rd party software like Silverfast and Vuescan is generally better and supports lots of different scanners. Negative Lab Pro has some amazing negative conversion and is useful with camera scanning which we'll get to in a second.

• High end desktop film scanners. This would be scanners like the Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED, Coolscan 9000 ED, PlusTek OpticFilm series, and many others from Canon, Minolta, Polaroid, etc. These are generally not made anymore except by PlusTek. The Nikon Coolscan series has a bunch of models and despite being long discontinued they are highly respected as some of the best film scanners ever made. They resolve way more detail from film, especially 35mm. Most only can scan 35mm though. Dedicated scanners like this are generally very expensive (Coolscans are usually way north of 1000 bucks) and very slow. The 5000ED has attachments to suck strips of film and stacks of slides, but these are expensive add-ons and getting pretty rare.

• Professional grade lab scanners. These are the machines that scanned film at film labs. As labs liquidated their old machines, these commercial scanners found their way into private hands. These include but aren't limited to the Noritsu LS-600, LS-1100, and HS-1800. The Fuji Frontier SP-3000, SP-2000, and SP-500. As well as the Kodak-Pakon F135, F235, and F335. I've owned the Pakon F135 and Noritsu LS-600. These machines scan film relatively quickly as they're designed to handle large batch orders. In the Noritsu's case very quickly. Their negative inversion algorithms were designed by the people who made the film and generally considered the benchmarks for negative inversion. Downsides include the Pakon only runs with proprietary software on Windows XP, Pakon hasn't existed since the early 2000s, Noritsu just stopped making parts for their scanners, Noritsu software is limited unless you buy a dongle that ranges from 600-2000 USD, and Noritsu's are extremely complex and cost $$$$$ if they break. A year or two ago I would have recommended these as a great option, but prices have skyrocketed as film photography has gotten more popular and supply of surplus scanners has dried up. I was lucky to have bought in at the right times or I wouldn't have an LS-600 right now. If you're interested in learning more about these machines there is a Pakon Facebook group and a Noritsu Facebook group. The Pakon group is generally friendlier, the Noritsu group's been a little crazy as of late lol.

• Scanning with a digital camera has recently become one of the best all round options. Simply setup a camera with a macro lens on a copy stand, tripod, or special film mount like the Nikon ES-2 or a cheaper knockoff. Here's a video of a simple setup, and another similar setup.. You can use a flash, a phone or tablet screen, or a high end lightpad as a light source. You generally want something with a high CRI, but I've seen good results from people using 20 dollar Amazon pads. Scanning slides with this method is pretty easy. Here's a couple slides from 1978 I did with an old Canon FD 100mm F4 macro lens attached to my A7III suspended over my phone with the slides held up off the screen by pennies. Just a few quick touch ups to the Raw files in Lightroom and I was done. Inverting color negatives is a much bigger chore and up until recently was a fairly lengthy process with a bunch of steps that usually gave pretty mediocre results. Some random dude with the requisite genius in color management came along and wrote Negative Lab Pro which has made it <em>wayyy</em> easier. You can check out some comparisons of the various manual methods with NLP on this reddit comment here. There's lots of great videos on it on YouTube and a Facebook group here. Nate actually just launched version 2.0 of the software a few days ago. You can build a decent setup to scan film with a camera for a couple hundred bucks or even cheaper if you use old lenses, your phone screen, and old flatbed film holders. There's tons of different ways to configure it and you can get a very fast workflow. With the negative inversion problem figured out I'd actually highly recommend this method. Major downside is that there is no infrared dust mitigation like every other option I've mentioned so far. You'll have to manually spot out dust that makes it through. Blowing it off works to an extent, but you'll never get it perfect. It's not horrible, just keep it in mind.

Finally, DO NOT buy those cheap all in one film scanners that are everywhere on amazon. Even the Kodak branded ones (just some sleezy company licensing the name, they make most of the other scanners in reality). I wrote the top review on this Jumbl branded scanner if you want to see some comparisons with nicer scanners. Generally these are rebranded from stuff on Aliexpress. They're just using crappy sensors paired with plastic lenses and bare bones software to convert it all. The detail is bad, the colors are bad, and you're better off just spending a little extra money on a flatbed scanner.

Anyway, there's a little of what I know. I love scanning film! Old photos really are quite beautiful and vibrant! Just takes a bit of extra effort to unlock it. Here's a couple of images I've scanned for friends and family. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

I also have a good amount photos to scan too

Who wants to pitch in :P

https://www.amazon.ca/Epson-FastFoto-FF-680W-Wireless-High-Speed/dp/B07DLX26BB/

Saved this. Looks like scanning with Eason FastFoto (auto document and date information) and then importing them into Eagle (can manage 100K more files) is an option to go? 🧐

There is a great scanner for photos but its priced in a way that you dont really want to buy it: https://www.amazon.ca/Epson-FastFoto-FF-680W-Wireless-High-Speed/dp/B07DLX26BB

I'd love to buy one, but at $700 CAD its a stupid idea.

I used my Epson FastFoto for this purpose. Also, doubles as a great (although not flatbed quality) photo scanner as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Epson-FastFoto-FF-680W-Wireless-High-Speed/dp/B07DLX26BB

That sounds like a fun project. However you can buy one of these bad boys and it’ll scan them in no time. epson fastfoto scanner

I was looking into photo scanners. The best one on the market is: https://www.amazon.ca/Epson-FastFoto-FF-680W-Wireless-High-Speed/dp/B07DLX26BB

But its $600 so that project will have to wait :)

For photos I bought an Epson FastFoto FF-680W. It’s working great. It scans very quickly and can correct for faded prints. It’s not a cheap scanner, but I’d spend a lot more sending everything to a service.

For slides I have a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i AI. It’s not fast, but it works great. The included software isn’t very good and I purchased VueScan to run it, which works great.

It all depends on how many you have (and what size they are). If they're normal prints, you can digitize them yourself. Your flatbed scanner could work if there aren't many, but if you've got a bunch, you could also get something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DLX26BB/

If it's a handful, any photo place should be able to help (camera store or walgreens/cvs). There are also places you can send a whole box (or boxes) off to, but that will obviously cost more.