Is there such a thing, as an automatic feed scanner for photo prints?

I have hundreds of rail and family prints in albums. I would sure like to digitize all of them, file the originals in boxes, and then get rid of the albums.

Depending on where you live and what your financial resources are like, a commercial firm would be your best bet. I was faced with the same situation a few years back. After going through the trouble of individually scanning and converting each slide/picture, I took them all to a local Walgreens drug store.

They sent them out to their provider and within 2 weeks I had everything back digitized, on CDs and a flash drive. It wasn't very expensive at all.

Unless you're specifically looking for a project to spend time on, taking them to a commercial firm is the best bet. There are scanners out there, but they can get expensive quickly and you'd have to set them up. Someplace like Walgreens or FedEx Office will do a good job.

Thanks for that. It is amazing how services have improved over 10-20 years. I did a quick search in my local language and immediately found a commercial firm offering package deals for hundreds of photos at a price that would be acceptable to me.

ASK FOR REFERENCES first.

Very much like "drugstore film processing," the quality can vary wildly.

One other consideration regarding "drugstore" type services: the material has to physically leave your possession. It could get lost or damaged in transit, or in the processing facility. If you have the original negatives and you are only scanning the prints, that mitigates the risk, but if this material is irreplaceable then for peace of mind you might want to scan those locally. High quality scanners for prints are not expensive.

I've had pretty good success digitizing old prints by simply photographing them with my smart phone. There are enough photo editing tools built into phones these days to easily adjust the images and with a little practice you can avoid shadows and reflected glare, while cranking them out pretty quickly. You could just as easily set up with any digital camera. Unless you have need for a very high resolution image, I think you will find the results just as good, if not better, than with a scanner.

- Alan Maples

One could also set up a good quality camera on a tripod pointing down and put pictures on the table under it. This would also work for drawings , maps, and blueprints.
M. Nix

I've used a good camera and copy lens mounted on a copy stand and a small LED light box to digitize 3-1/4" x 4-1/4" glass lantern slides.

Scanners are focussed for copy on the scanner's glass and do not have much depth of field. The cover glass protecting the emulsion on a lantern slide prevents optimal resolution by the scanner, but a camera can be focussed exactly on the emulsion.

I digitized a set of lantern slides by this method and donated them to a library. The archivist asked how I got such sharp copies from lantern slides since they are difficult to scan. I gave her the recipe.