Scanning your old 35mm film strips is easy and you can do it yourself. I’m sure you have some 8mm or 35mm film strips that you want digital copies of. If your parents raised you in the 80’s or 90’s chances are there is a container in your house somewhere full of 8mm film strips from One Hour Photo or Walgreens from when photos were developed. Thankfully most photo places returned the film strips after developing them and most of our baby boomer parents hung on to them.
Honestly, this process is simple enough where you just need to purchase an 8mm film scanner and follow their directions. A scanner runs from $50-$150 depending on the quality and name brand you choose. Something to keep in mind is most of these film strips were from cheap disposable cameras therefore the quality you have isn’t too hard to achieve.
I used a DIGITNOW 22MP All-in-1 Film & Slide Scanner, and the process could not be easier. Granted, you would also need to purchase an SD card, but the idea is to just insert the film strip in the scanner, line up with the onscreen display, click “scan”, and voilà . You’re done.
Depending on which film scanner you purchase, you can scan 35mm, 126, 110, Super 8 or 8mm film strips.
If you’re looking for the highest quality scanner, from my research the Kodak Scanza is your best bet running at $160 at the time of this writing. Although as you can see from the photo set below, the quality of the DIGITNOW 22MP All-in-1 Film & Slide Scanner fit my needs and gave me a nice little nostalgia blast from the childhood photos I did have.
