A few weeks I mentioned that we had decided to get all of our old APS film digitized by a service called DigMyPics. I thought I’d post some results here in case others were considering doing the same.
We sent in 70 rolls of APS film - which translated to around 2000 exposures. I just sent the film packed in the little binders we had for the APS format, and shipped it out USPS for around $17.00. DigMyPics sent us an email when they received our shipment and confirmed what we wanted. Another email came around 4 business days later when they started processing our order. They included a URL where we could watch the progress and see thumbnails of the images as they were scanned in.
That process took 3-4 days and once it was done we got another email with a link to an interface where we could select up to 1/3 of the scanned photos to delete (and not pay for). The only real gripe we have about the service was that this interface didn’t track how many images you have selected for deletion, nor was it obvious how to save mid-stream and come back to the project. Our first pass through we guessed we were done, submitted the order and then got the count - and saw that we could have eliminated about 150 more images. At $0.35 an image that was still a significant amount - but the interface offered no clear way to go back and re-enter the elimination process. MsBoyink emailed their customer service on a Friday evening and the next day there was a response - and DigMyPics had set the order back into the elimination process so we could delete more prints. This time through we capped out at the 1/3 and completed the order.
Our costs past the shipping to DigMyPics were roughly $450 - which sounds like a lot of money until I started looking at more DIY ways of digitizing these photos and how much time it would take just to scan, much less do any processing.
So off to DigMyPics they went.
Below are some samples - overall I’m happy with the results and would use DigMyPics again. I do see some redeye in some of them - which I thought their processing would eliminate. All of these were taken with an Canon APS SLR camera set on automatic. They are as received from DigMyPics - All I’ve done is resize them. Click for a larger version.
My now-13 year old boy (wasn’t he a looker?)
The quintessential Christmas card shot - pillow cases, bathrobes, belts, a doll - and as far as the grandparents are concerned I don’t think we ever topped it:
The pensive girl - up early one morning and not willing to smile yet. She’s now 11.
A couple of my favorites - mommy was gone, and I think one of them was reading a book about pretending to fly to the moon. We re-created it - Grampas old hats were our helmets, the sunglasses our face shields, other clothes from the dress-up box were our spacesuits, blankets draped over a couch became the spaceship. Such fun.
Another of my girl. At this age all we heard from the two of them was “Me!” from him and then a squeaky “Me Too!” from her. So we had t-shirts made to say just that.
The APS negatives are now out in the trash (that was hard to do!), the DVD’s from DigMyPics are stored in the safe, and copies of the digital files are in the backup queue on the network. This project was a long time coming - and it’s really nice to have it done.