Peace of Mind Organizing

Review of the Epson FastFoto FF-680W photo scanner

8 August 2019

As I mentioned in a post earlier this week, I’ve been organizing and scanning my photos from the 80s and 90s, primarily. The project was prompted by the discovery of a cache of photos in a closet and given a little urgency by the offer of a loan of an Epson FastFoto FF-680W photo scanner in exchange for a review.

I’ve now scanned hundreds of photos with this handy little scanner. It’s a sheet-fed scanner (like a fax machine), so it handles prints only. The photos I was scanning were relatively new and were not fragile, so I had no hesitation to put them in the sheet feeder. Based on my experience, though, I think I’d be comfortable putting old photos in the sheet feeder, as long as they weren’t crumbly or torn. The scanner does come with a carrier sheet for more delicate photos, though I didn’t try it.

The scanner has software that allows for easy organization of the digital photos, assuming you’ve already taken the time to organize the prints. As I explained in my previous post, I went through my photos and grouped them into categories that made sense to me. The software is set up so that you can assign a year (or a decade), a month (or a season), and a description to each batch. The description becomes the folder name and the year, month and description, followed by a number become the file names for each photo in the batch, which are numbered sequentially.

Here’s a photo of the screen where you make those selections:

It’s quite simple. If you finish a batch and later find photos that belong in that folder, it’s easy to just make the same selections and they’ll be added to the folder.

Once I got past the idea that I needed to name every photo (again, see my previous blog post), the process went quickly. The scanner is well named. It’s really fast!

Please note that the photos should be inserted face up, so that they the rollers do not come in contact with the photo. Inserting photos face down might result in scratching. Photos should also be inserted in a landscape orientation. When I scanned the photos, I inserted them improperly and risked scratching. Thankfully, my photos weren’t scratched. I had originally posted a video of the process to show the speed of scanning but have removed it so as not to be demonstrating improper insertion of the photos.

I was scanning old snapshots at 300 dpi, so it’s a bit hard to evaluate the quality of the scanned photos. I did use the auto enhancement setting so that I would get a duplicate, enhanced version of any photos that started out sub-standard. These photos were color corrected and red eye was eliminated. Pretty cool.

I choose to store my photos on my hard drive, but the software allows you to upload your photos to Dropbox or Google drive with a click. There’s also a sharing button for easy sharing via Facebook or email. I chose to store the folders in my folder structure on my Mac, but there is an option for saving it to the Photos app.

At $529, this isn’t a scanner for the casual or infrequent user. But if you have a lot of photos to scan, it might be something to consider. It’s fast, easy to use and virtually trouble free.

The Epson FastFoto scanner made a project I’d been putting off really easy. I had no trouble organizing my prints—I broke that project into little pieces and really enjoyed looking at a the photos—but I had really dragged my feet doing the scanning. That’s a shame, because it turned out to be a breeze!

Tagged with: photographs, photo organizing, reviews, scanning

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