2 years ago
If you were asked by a neighborhood teenager to let him CONVERT your olddddd slides or negatives to digital format, would you?
What if he told you that he was donating half the proceeds to a worthy charity? How much would you be willing to pay for the service? Any suggestions for such an enterprising young man?
Separate topics with commas, or by pressing return. Use the delete or backspace key to edit or remove existing topics.
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$1 Answer
I think I would.
The risk is that my old photos get damaged - so I might want to try just a few to start with. But if that worked then I would want to do a lot more. Maybe you would organise your sales approach taking this into consideration.
I would expect them to fall into a couple of categories like slides, strip negatives, and photos.
The Photos should be at 300 dpi minimum color or B&W. Delivered in PNG or tiff format. Not Jpg (its lossy) but having little jpg files made of each image would be a huge bonus. One for archive and one for sending to other people.
The slides would be 1200dpi minimum - generally you need a special slide scanner for these but some flatbed scanners come with slide trays like the Canoscan series. I would also expect these in png or tiff.
For film negatives - these would be the best but you should also color balance them, or scan them at a much increased bit depth (prefereably floating point like EXR format) so that they could be color balanced or adjusted later from your original scan. Also at 1200dpi native scanning resolution.
I'd pay 1 dollar a picture, 1.50 a slide, and 2.50 dollars a filmstrip (scan them all together in one for archive purposes) Then an additional amount for each jpg (some fraction of that) for the smaller versions of the pictures.
You will need to automate the scanning process somehow - its very time consuming, and you want good quality and as few mistakes as possible. Programs like ImageMagick are very useful for automating image processing tasks. Coupling this with a simle scripting language like Python is a good approach to automating these processes. (see below for links)
You could then offer extra services like acting as an intermediary to companies that will print photos or photomontages onto canvas.
The risk is that my old photos get damaged - so I might want to try just a few to start with. But if that worked then I would want to do a lot more. Maybe you would organise your sales approach taking this into consideration.
I would expect them to fall into a couple of categories like slides, strip negatives, and photos.
The Photos should be at 300 dpi minimum color or B&W. Delivered in PNG or tiff format. Not Jpg (its lossy) but having little jpg files made of each image would be a huge bonus. One for archive and one for sending to other people.
The slides would be 1200dpi minimum - generally you need a special slide scanner for these but some flatbed scanners come with slide trays like the Canoscan series. I would also expect these in png or tiff.
For film negatives - these would be the best but you should also color balance them, or scan them at a much increased bit depth (prefereably floating point like EXR format) so that they could be color balanced or adjusted later from your original scan. Also at 1200dpi native scanning resolution.
I'd pay 1 dollar a picture, 1.50 a slide, and 2.50 dollars a filmstrip (scan them all together in one for archive purposes) Then an additional amount for each jpg (some fraction of that) for the smaller versions of the pictures.
You will need to automate the scanning process somehow - its very time consuming, and you want good quality and as few mistakes as possible. Programs like ImageMagick are very useful for automating image processing tasks. Coupling this with a simle scripting language like Python is a good approach to automating these processes. (see below for links)
You could then offer extra services like acting as an intermediary to companies that will print photos or photomontages onto canvas.
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
The pricing seems a bit high to me. In principle, I'd assess this based on how many images can be scanned per hour, especially if the process is automated. If you assume this person can scan 20 images per hour (3 minutes each), paying $1 each provides a $20/hour income, with half going to charity this is still an above-average $10/hour for a teen. If the teen in question lets his/her parents make the donation, they also get a nice tax break, increasing the value to the family in question.