Scanner features and models for bulk family picture scanning (decades of pix)

I am new into genealogy, and as part of this my wife and I will scan
in decades of family photos. We will be getting a scanner very soon
as part of this. We hope to pay not more than about US $500, and
cheaper would be better if it is good enough.

I should mention that we will be using it in combination with
genealogy reseach, and for some key photos will enter a lot of info
about a given photo(perhaps with the GenBox program). However, I
anticipate that almost all of our photos will not be incorporated into
any Genealogy info and at best we will just estimate the date, not
even entering in who is in the photo. We have had a few decades of
photos just sitting around waiting to be added to photo albums, and we
have now decided to do that virtually.

What features are essential or at least desirable for such a scanner?

Having a photo feeder SEEMS essential here, so you can just put a
stack of photos in and let it work for hours. But I have heard that
many of them do not work very well. (I should note that the photos
are all boring normal size snapshot photos, not heirloom ones with
unusual sizes etc.) Given that the vast majority of our photos will
not be annotated at all, just quickly organized with a photo album
program, a photo feeder seems very important to make it much more
efficient. But I welcome sanity checks here...

Note that I do not think we need to be able to scan negatives, cause
we have prints of everything, but if a scanner came with negative
capability then I may pay a bit more for it cause you never know when
you might need it later. Some people recommend just scanning negavies
when possible. Comments on the tradeoffs/benefits? Should I prefer
scanning negatives, and then not need a photo feeder but maybe need a
way to insert a negative strip? Do some good scanners come with both
yet be not too hugely expensive?

Optical resolution is obviously important. Some recent scanners
support 4800 dpi optical, but how much is really needed? What depth
of color (how many bits) is essential or useful?

What scanners should we consider? Part of this answer might be not
just meeting features from the above discussion but also maybe having
great scanning software.

HP's ScanJet 5550C seems ideal here, at least based on my initial
assumptions (which may not be true), but there may be others, and
there may be problems with the 5550C that I do not know of. (Probably
not, HP makes good scanners.) However, some on epinions.com
complained that it jammed on stacks of photos, which would be very bad
for us. And their 5530 seems to be very poorly rated for jamming.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Dave: You'll get much better answers to this sort of question on
comp.periphs.scanners. I've crossposted this there, and set followups.

Dave Bakken wrote:

I am new into genealogy, and as part of this my wife and I will scan
in decades of family photos. We will be getting a scanner very soon
as part of this. We hope to pay not more than about US $500, and
cheaper would be better if it is good enough.

I should mention that we will be using it in combination with
genealogy reseach, and for some key photos will enter a lot of info
about a given photo(perhaps with the GenBox program). However, I
anticipate that almost all of our photos will not be incorporated into
any Genealogy info and at best we will just estimate the date, not
even entering in who is in the photo. We have had a few decades of
photos just sitting around waiting to be added to photo albums, and we
have now decided to do that virtually.

What features are essential or at least desirable for such a scanner?

Having a photo feeder SEEMS essential here, so you can just put a
stack of photos in and let it work for hours. But I have heard that
many of them do not work very well. (I should note that the photos
are all boring normal size snapshot photos, not heirloom ones with
unusual sizes etc.) Given that the vast majority of our photos will
not be annotated at all, just quickly organized with a photo album
program, a photo feeder seems very important to make it much more
efficient. But I welcome sanity checks here...

Note that I do not think we need to be able to scan negatives, cause
we have prints of everything, but if a scanner came with negative
capability then I may pay a bit more for it cause you never know when
you might need it later. Some people recommend just scanning negavies
when possible. Comments on the tradeoffs/benefits? Should I prefer
scanning negatives, and then not need a photo feeder but maybe need a
way to insert a negative strip? Do some good scanners come with both
yet be not too hugely expensive?

Optical resolution is obviously important. Some recent scanners
support 4800 dpi optical, but how much is really needed? What depth
of color (how many bits) is essential or useful?

What scanners should we consider? Part of this answer might be not
just meeting features from the above discussion but also maybe having
great scanning software.

HP's ScanJet 5550C seems ideal here, at least based on my initial
assumptions (which may not be true), but there may be others, and
there may be problems with the 5550C that I do not know of. (Probably
not, HP makes good scanners.) However, some on epinions.com
complained that it jammed on stacks of photos, which would be very bad
for us. And their 5530 seems to be very poorly rated for jamming.

Thanks in advance for any help!

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