Photo Scanner with document feed?

[Cinde]

I currently use a Canon MultiPass MP370 (scanner/copier/printer) and a Canon CanoScan Lide 70 (flatbed scanner). It really hurts my shoulder to lift and close the lid multiple times (100 -200 pix) during one setting. I think dropping each photo into an auto feeder and letting it roll out the other side will be easier than lifting the lid, placing the photo, scanning, lifting the lid, taking out the photo and repeating the cycle with each individual photo.

I’d like to find a photo scanner with a document feed that will let me manually put in various size photos that will not bend photos (or jam) as they go through.

When I get photos from my clients they are in numeric order. The first may be an 8x10, the second a wallet size, then a 5x7, etc. I can’t really stack all the photos of one size and then move to the next size. So I know I will have to do them one at a time.

Is anyone using something like this?

[Stregga]

Cinde,

I know what you mean bout picking up that scanner lid, what a pain! While I don't currently use a document feeder, I do use a microtek scanner which works great for me. Here is there site with one of few scanners that they offer with a doc feeder which I've seen and appeared to work as intended.

As a side note, do you use Photoshop CS2 or later? If you do, are you aware of the feature it has that allows you to scan multiple photos at one time and automaticly crop them for you? It is extremely accurate and powerful.

[Chuck Engels]

I always scan as many images as will fit on the scanner and crop them later, I usually have to crop them anyway.
The auto cropping on scans does work very well also, even in Photoshop Elements, but I still like to do a lot of things manually.

You will find that most document feeders come as attachments to scanners, be sure to check that the scanner you buy has an available document feeder attachment.
They usually cost as much or more than the scanners themselves

[decolb]

I have an older HP 5530 flatbed with a doc feeder, but it only handles up to 5X7. Also it doesn't work very well. Don't think HP offers a doc feeder anymore, maybe that is why. I haven't loaded PSE6 yet, but in 4 you can scan mutiple photos into the editor and then go to edit/divide scanned photos which works pretty well most of the time. While on the subject, my scanner has 2400X4800 res, is that enough for DVD production? I will be doing little or no printing.

Dave

[Chuck Engels]

Video size for watching on a standard television is 720 x 480, most times you have no reason to use images over 1000 x 750 so your scanner is more than able to handle the task
In fact, if you use images larger than 1024 x 768 they can cause problems in Premiere Elements, the larger the pixel size the better chance of a problem.

[kodebuster]

I had (in the past) a scanner with document feeder and finally trashed it and went with a flatbed scanner.

What I found was that the rollers and guides on the document feeder were constanly getting dirty and would eventually leave faint straight lines on any scanned photo images.

I seemed to always find myself cleaning the rollers and guides with alcohol and Q-tips.

Maybe others had success with feeders, but in my case it just wasn't worth the maintenance effort involved with keeping the rollers and guides squeaky clean.

(Keep in mind that I was using the feeder to scan in a large collection of very old photos, so I'm sure that was a factor on the feeder needing constant cleaning)...