🚀 go-pugleaf

The negatives and photos I inherited come from the period between the 1920s
to early 1960s and are black and white.  There are a mixture of sizes in
both the negatives and the photos.

One lot of negatives are 7cm by 4cm (2.75 by about 1.5 inches) with two
pictures on each of this sized negative.  The other size is 6cms by 6.15cms
(2 by 2.25 inches) with one picture on the negative.  There are a number of
negatives which have been taken at night and have "120 or B20" written on
the folder they're in.

The photos include a range of sizes from 4cm by 3cm (1.5 inches by less than
1.25 inches) and 3.5cms by 4.25 cms (1.5 by 1.75 inches) to the large family
portraits eg 21cms by 16cms (8.5 by 6.5 inches) or larger.  These are all
black and white.  They appear to be in pretty good condition, have been in
original camera shop envelopes and most aren't badly marked or creased.

Apart from scanning those I also want to scan the family photos I've taken
over the years or been sent by other family members.  This includes a couple
of thousand negatives or photos from the late 1960s on in a mixture of black
and white and colour.

I've never used a scanner for this sort or amount of work before.
Recommendations on the best scanner to handle this task appreciated.  By
best scanner I'm thinking of ease of use for scanning multiple small
negatives and photos and a reasonable quality output which won't require too
much fiddling.  I've looked at a couple of scanners with inbuilt negative
handlers and am wondering how well these work.  Would they be suitable for
the older style negatives and mixed sizes I have?  I would like to scan
multiple negatives or photos at once so I don't spend the next 10 years of
my spare time scanning.  Is this possible and if yes, what equipment do I
need to manage this?

I would also appreciate any tips about best handling this amount of work ie.
how best to set the scanner up for this, do I want highest level quality
scanning or am I likely to take much less time for a reasonable output if
I'm not too fussy. What sorts of differences will I get in the scanned
material with this approach?   I have both Photoshop vs 7 and MGI photsuite
vs 8.05 - haven't used either of these previously which one of these is best
for working with the scanned photos/negatives?


Thanks all

Anne