Old family photos - scanner recommendations

Why don’t you take a photograph of each one? Phones take very good photos these days, it can then go up into the clouds or wherever they go , or you can put them onto a memory stick or an external hard drive. That’s what I have done with all mine, I then sent a copy to each of the children, just in case I lose all of mine.
Scanning is such a faff and you have to unstick all the pics from the albums.

Don’t most printers have scanners? A photo of a photo is poorer quality than a scan.

The scanner I have right now is an ADF Brother DS-640. It was only $100 at best buy and supports up to 24 bit color with 1200dpi. I am using it to digitize some of my old b/w photography and its pretty great for the price. Their software is a bit lacking but for some reason creates clearer scans than the windows default software.

Our iPhone takes excellent photos of photos, not poorer quality at all.

I have a printer with a scanner, but it is so slow and would take ages to tackle photo mountain. I know you can get dedicated photo scanners which can scan far more quickly and I just wondered whether anyone had any experience of one of these?

I took loads of very old photos for the family by using my iPad and iPhone. The result was better than the original photos. I would bother with a scanner.

Photo taken with my iPhone camera..

I’ve got an app on my iPhone called PhotoScan which is designed for doing this. Great results.

Old photographs are a hobby of mine and I've scanned and restored a lot of them. Scanning will give much better results than taking a photograph. I used an Epson Perfection scanner recommended for photographs.
Old photographs have often faded or turned yellow but the negatives are still perfect. So if you have negatives then scan them, because the result is much better. I scanned some negatives from the 1930s and they looked as though they were taken yesterday. You can get simple negative scanners, but unless you have a large number you could take a few negatives to a photographer to be scanned.
Or if you want to splash out, the Epson Perfection V600 does negatives, slides and photographs Epson Perfection V600

I've scanned lots of old family photo's and have a Canon Lide scanner, I really like it because it runs on a standard USB and doesn't need a mains plug, so it can stay on my shelf when not in use. I bought it some time ago but I think I paid about £60 for it.

We've got an Epson 2650 printer/scanner - does a lovely job of old photos but it is slow.

It depends on whether you just want a copy of the photo. If you want to restore them they do need a scanner I think rather than straight photographs because you want the pixcel count to be as high as possible, although that might not be true anymore with the top of the range cameras on some phones these days.

I think a good scanner would probably be cheaper than a new iPhone though.

I just use the scan function on the printer.

I used scan feature on new printer that had bluetooth. I was able to sent to tablet then use features on it to trim/tidy/enhance original photos. I have now made up several 'photobooks' based on individuals and memorable events. I set up on a website and then they were printed off as minibooks. Extra copies can be ordered of books.

I’m agreeing with Chestnut . I used an older model of the Epson Perfection to scan in my thousands of slides. I can’t remember its cost but not bank breaking. It does photos and negatives also. I store them on Apple’s iCloud as well as the iMac so they are always safe should I set my home afire!

Thanks for all your comments. I'll investigate some of your recommendations.

There are many applications for scanners but personally I have never tried them.