Scans for the memory

Across this green and pleasant land, precious photos sit in kitchen drawers, cupboards and shoeboxes just waiting to be digitised. Whether with a scanner or your camera, Will Cheung explains how you can do your bit for posterity

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Film is enjoying a revival. Younger creators who have only known digital have discovered there's a special pleasure to be had from the light-sensitive stuff; and there are those who grew up with film, switched to digital and have rediscovered their love for analogue. Whether film's second coming is driven by the technical challenge of getting things right at capture, the craft of film photography or the thrill, one thing is for sure, film is on the up.

You could argue that the medium never truly went away and there is a huge archive of memories, history and creativity out there, in drawers, shoeboxes, still stashed in their original d&p wallets or neatly catalogued in albums.

So, whether you're creating fresh images or working with existing ones, digitising film pictures is very much a good thing.

Once in a digital form, you can clean and colour correct them, make endless perfect copies for your archive and there's the multitude of options when it comes to outputting; social media, books, prints, mugs, jigsaws, wall art and so much more.

Next steps

Right, we've got you interested, what next? Of course, there are the commercial options to consider, but our focus is on homework where there's the option of scanning with a dedicated piece of equipment or using your camera as a 'scanner'.

It is less likely is that you own a scanner but if this option appeals, something like an Epson Perfection V600 flatbed scanner is in the shops at £299 and can handle different film formats as well as prints and documents. If you use only 35mm format film, consider the Plustek OpticFilm 8200 Ai while the Kenro Film Scanner KNSC201 at £115 is more budget-friendly.