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 Thursday, August 02, 2012
Scanning Old Family Photos With Flip-Pal
Posted by Diane
Now that we're carrying the Flip-Pal
mobile scanner in ShopFamilyTree.com, I wanted to see what all
the fuss was about, so I gave it a try on one of my favorite
pictures: My great-grandparents on their porch in
Bellevue, Ky., about 1925, judging from my grandma's age (she's the
baby).
The scanner is nice and light, about the size of a book, and it runs
on four AA batteries. The scanning
window is smaller than a desktop scanner, 4x6 inches, so you need to
scan a larger document in parts and then stitch them together. (The
scanner comes with Easy-Stitch software to do this.)
You can
scan at a resolution of 300 or 600 dpi. 300 is the lowest recommended dpi for images you want to
digitally archive, and will allow you to make a good print that's
the same size as the original photo. 600 dpi is even better, because you
can enlarge the photo before printing it.
I tried the Sketch
Kit, sold separately from the scanner, which lets you annotate photos
and documents in a low-tech way. It's a clear acrylic panel you
place over your picture and write on with an erasable marker, like
so:
Then to scan the annotated photo, you pop out the Flip-Pal lid, flip
the scanner over and press the big green button to scan the Sketch
panel on top of your picture:
(I kept accidentally pressing the green button
during the lid removal and flipping.) Here's that scan:
You'll also want the photo itself, minus the Sketch
panel. For that, you pop the lid back in and place the picture face
down on the scanner, as you would for a desktop scanner. The
scan:
The images are saved onto an SD card. I discovered just
this morning that my computer here at work has an SD card
reader—perfect. (The scanner is also compatible with
wireless Eye-fi SD cards.) If you don't have a card reader, you can plug the card into the included SD-to-USB adaptor and stick that into your computer's USB drive.
You can see technical
specs for the Flip-Pal scanner here and FAQs here. I did these two quick scans without reading instructions, but I'll check them
out to learn more about the scanner
settings and how to use the stitching software.
You can find the Flip-Pal
scanner and accessories such as the Sketch
Kit and a carrying
case in ShopFamilyTree.com. If you're trying to decide whether
to buy, we've also got a Flip-Pal
product review article download.
Got a bunch of family photos and heirlooms you need to archive and share? Learn how in our Aug. 9 Digitize Your Family History webinar.
Editor's Pick | Photos | saving and sharing family history | Webinars
Thursday, August 02, 2012 1:02:43 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) 
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