How To Be The Dear Departed

First rule is to leave money - plenty of it. Second rule is to leave pictures - plenty of them. Third rule is to digitise them before you go. If you fail in any of these you will still be departed, but you won't be dear. You'll be viewed in another light - particularly if you only leave 50 shoeboxes of old prints. Ask me. About five years ago an in-law went into a nursing home and eventually came out again...In the meantime the 50 albums of family photos were gathered up and the task of sorting and saving was begun. Fortunately she had a smart grandson who went and got himself an Epson quick scanner. It may not have been the deluxe version you see here - and Epson FF680W Fast Foto - but it was automated enough to let him grind through the 50 albums...and the shoe boxes, and the paper packets...and get the images down into digital form. It still took months, and now that it is done it will take years of digital sorting and identification to make an adequate time line of it all. But at least the hard work was done easily. The prints went in to the top feed, shot through as fast as they were scanned and came out the bottom. He opted for a cabled link to the receiving computer, but could have done it wirelessly instead. I don't think he modified what he scanned, but with this model you can - there is picture recovery and enhancement galore. It might slow the process, but not by much. And it is at a good resolution; 300 dpi. The specs of this one also note that it can read the back of a print and record any written material on that side at the same time as the image. This is absolutely priceless for the archivist...but depends upon the photographer writing something back there - preferably in soft pencil. Hint to you all - do this with your pictures before your mind becomes a soft pencil. This scanner can cope with documents as well as pictures, so an entire history can be translated as fast as you can feed it. It is far better than trying to do the same thing with a flatbed scanner - even though Epson makes wonderful examples of those. This is a dedicated life-saver.