FastFoto FF-640 High-Speed Photo Scanning System with Auto Photo Feeder

So my wife and I have inherited thousands of pictures and we don't have a lot of space. We wanted to scan them all, but having scanned small amounts of pictures in the past, I know what an ordeal it is to do that, and the thought of doing thousands, maybe tens of thousands is too daunting to even consider. So I found this scanner and read and watched several reviews. $600 is a lot of money to plunk down on a scanner, and I was skeptical about how useful this would be. I am an IT professional and I have used many a piece of fancy equipment that you have to spend more time fixing or un jamming rather than reaping any benefits out of it. I can only say that this is the most amazing scanner I have ever used and if you have literally thousands of photos to scan, it's worth twice what I paid for it. My wife and I spent about 4 hours on Sunday, and we scanned 3261 pictures, which had filled up 2 large boxes. Most of the time was spent by either my wife sorting the pictures into decades and looking for duplicates and by both of use removing some photos from albums. I can't really say how much of that was actual scanning, but the scanning portion is so very quick and easy, it's absolutely amazing. Aside from it being quick and painless, it is also fantastic. For starters it automatically scans the back of the pictures without any loss of speed. so if you have notes written on the back, you won't lose them, and it's smart enough to "detect" writing, so it won't just automatically scan the backs unless there is something on it worth keeping (this is configurable, so you can either adjust the threshold or have it scan all backs anyway). It will also automatically color / exposure correct all of the photos for you and give you the option of updating the original scan, or saving it as an alternate file. I pretty much liked most or all of the adjusted photos more than the originals, but my wife liked some of the originals better, so we wound up using the multiple file option, which gives you a little more work afterwards, but it's great to have the option... Another really amazing thing is the feed / scanner system. While there are guides on the feeder to select the size, I've found that you absolutely don't need them for most things. You can put photos of completely different sizes in the same batch and it will handle them just fine. Also, on rare occasions I have seen it miss-feed a photo and it goes through slightly crooked, but somehow the scan comes out perfectly straight. The auto feed says it allows you to put 30 photos in, but I have actually gotten a couple more than that, but for the most part it's probably going to be less than that for most batches. Also, If the photos have too much curl in them, you're going to find that you'll have to put fewer photos in a batch or else it may jam on the first picture. The printer includes a sleeve for scanning damaged or extremely fragile items, and I used it for a few news paper clippings, but using it will require you to edit the photo and crop out the sleeve itself. Also, after using the sleeve a few times I tried putting some newspaper clipping through without the sleeve and it worked just fine, so the scanner really is extremely gentle on whatever passes through it. About the only thing it doesn't do is polaroid pictures, if you have boxes of those, don't get this, they are too thick to go through the feeder and will jam every time. Luckily we only had 1 of those, but I was able to test it out and verify it won't work. (It also states it's not for polaroids in the manual). Bottom line, if you are faced with a large picture scanning project, you should absolutely buy this, now.

In the first five days of using this scanner I scanned more than 5000 photos. Not only is the scanner very fast, it handles stacks of old, odd size formats with ease and with rarely a misfeed. The automatic color correction is remarkably good. While it requires the photos in each batch to be the same size, it easily accomdates small variations without a problem. The software that comes with it (I am using the Mac OS version--Sierra) is easy to use and has fairly flexible file naming capability. One feature that I found to be extremely useful was the ability to detect writing on the back of photos and to simultaneously scan both sides. The filenames are tagged with "a" and "b". For example 1999_Christmas_0001_a and 1999_Christmas_0001_b. It will also save a version without color corrections, but I found the correction to be reliable enough that I didn't bother with that. The feed path is short and straight through and I had no trouble with damage to any of my photos. While it can also scan documents, I have only done a few and have not tried stacking them. The bottom line is that, if like me you have years of photos to scan, it will save you an enormous amount of time when compared to using a flat bed scanner while producing faithful copies of the originals. Of course if your goal is making copies that can be greatly enlarged or edited, then it would be better to use a flat bed and more sophisticated software. Finally, I note that several reviewers received their scanners free to test and write reviews, I did not. I purchased it at full price.

Have thousands, upon thousands of pictures to scan. I choose this scanner for two reasons: a.) 600 dpi vs regular 300dpi of other sanners b.) Auto feeder Ever since I received FF640 - its been great. Very simple to get running. Be sure, however to follow the 4 simple steps - that it has.. and install the software drivers in the order that it tells you! The epson scanning software is a little "clunky" but it gets the job done. I have turned on the all the auto-correct features that comes with the software and works great for me. You can pick the year, season and a description ( any combination thereof) .. the software creates a folder, and just start scanning. Can scan about 25-30 pics at once... takes just a few minutes. Again.. the FF-640 just works. The biggest challenge has nothing to do with the product, but more to do with organizing the pictures into sequence, "set" and size. In other words, putting all of Christmas 2007 pictures together, in sequence and then by size. You can keep scanning "batch (up to30 pics) after batch, into the same folder. The second biggest challenge, again.. has nothing to do with the product.. but that of creating "tags'" on the photos..after I have scanned them in. Sure, they are all now logically in the same folder.. but if I want to "tag" Aunt Mary and uncle Bob, in each photo.. that takes different software. I down the loaded the fatPhotoTaggerv3 ... and that works well. Again... nothing to do with the actual scanning.. but needful to keep up with what you have scanned. Can't say enough about how simple and fast this product is for scanning photos. Only photos that you probably can't scan are the polaroid pictures created during the 70's = 80's. (the ones with the big white boarder at the bottom) .. Reason being is the.. those specific type pics are thicker. I have not tried to scan them, but seems like a bad idea. To be clear . the older polaroids created anytime before the 70's scan just great!! So easy to scan older photos..

De EPSON siempre espero lo mejor y nunca he sido descepcionado. Es un scanner velóz y con excelente calidad de imagen, lo recomiendo para trabajos de digitalización de fotografías familiares o bien, para proyectos en los que importa el mejor balance costo-beneficio. Para digitalización fotográfica con fines artísticos y creativos, EPSON cuenta con mejores scanners como la serie V700, V750, V800 y V850 Pro. De Amazon me encanta que los impuestos de importación quedan definidos y cobrados desde el principio, entonces aquí en México nunca tengo que hacer desembolsos adicionales. Gran producto (EPSON), gran vendedor (AMAZON), ¡Gran experiencia de compra! ¿Trump dejará que esta bonita relación de valor siga adelante? No lo dejemos a la suerte, luchemos por ello, muchos negocios dependen de ello, negocios estadounidenses y negocios mexicanos por igual.

I am a long term photo archivist with long experience with the scanning of large numbers of photos, old and new. This year I decided I would start a 10,000 4x6" photo scanning job. As for much of the last 5 years I started this project using a "Epson B11B172171 Perfection 2480 Limited Edition - flatbed scanner". This had been a game changer for me in the past as I could load up a stack of photos and have them reliably scanned in a reasonable amount of time. It would rarely jam except on highly glossy prints. At most, I'd only have to lift up the scanner attachment and wipe off the glass of the flatbed scanner with my hand every 10 to 15mins or so (ie. no work needed). It was noisy but it did have a fan in the unit to provide for back-pressure, and fortunately, to suck out most of the resulting dust. The EPSON scan software also had a checkbox for dust removal which was beneficial. Now, the downside was the speed of this machine to scan photos. Using statistics, I determined it would take 30 days of 11 hours/day, entirely non-stop scanning to complete my new scanning job. At the rate I was progressing I knew it would take an eternity to complete this job so I thought I'd look around to see if anything new had come onto the market since the B11B172171 had come to market. That is when I discovered the EPSON FF-640. I am writing this review after completing my 10k photo scanning job with the new FF-640. First and foremost, I was forced at gunpoint to purchase this unit because there was nothing else on the market (that I knew of) at consumer level pricing and scanning speed, so I had to bite the bullet at its rather 3x over-inflated cost. My comments based on real experience with the unit: - It is so fast that it gives you no time to do any other tasks. - The other reviewers were spot on with their comments. You should assume that approx 25% of your scanning time will have to be allocated to constantly cleaning the entire insides of the scanner (every few minutes). With my prior B11B172171 scanner it mostly remained dust free but with the FF-640 you will literally have to clean the entire insides of the machine, and VERY carefully, for every 24 to 36 photos, or thereabouts. Dust specs accumulate on the narrow scanner glass window and lead to white streaks in all of the photos. - Given the white line problem, you need to review your photos carefully after each batch scanning run to see if they are okay. I never had to do that, ever, with my prior B11B172171 unit. - I usually have to re-scan a fair number of the photos due to the white streaks and the dust. I suppose I could alleviate these re-scans if I just cleaned the scanner after each batch of 24 photos. - The scanning software (EPSON Scan 2) does not appear to have a checkbox for dust removal as did my older EPSON scan software but that wasn't a game changer for me. - I exclusively use EPSON scanners since the early 2000s and they have all been wonderful but I'd have to say that the FF-640 "totally sucks" only due to its dust cleaning issue. Otherwise, it is quite a wonderful machine and professionally built. - I also own the Fujutsu ScanSnap 500 which in one of the most amazing machines I've used in recent times. It is not a photo scanner but purely a document scanner. I've pumped a huge number of documents through it with no need for cleaning nor careful maintenance. The ScanSnap 500 + FF-640 are similar in professional build, speed and quality but the FF-640 seems to be have been released all too quickly before the dust issue(s) had been better resolved (especially based on the premium price I paid for it). - I'd love EPSON to offer me a promissory note for a future scanner purchase to replace or upgrade the FF-640 with a better model which has a fan that sucks out the dust or will do a better job of cleaning the photos and/or scanner glass. - I would recommend this scanner to anyone who needs to scan a large number of photos but you may want to wait for future models to come out which do a better job with the dust issue.

I have a top of the line flatbed scanner, and have been intending to scan years worth of family snapshots for ages. But it's such a labour-intensive process, I've never done more than a handful. This FastFoto scanner is awesome. It's fast, easy to operate, and produces great scans (with one caveat, see below). The bundled software greatly simplifies the task, as it auto-names each scan file. You specify a title for a bunch of photos (6th Birthday Party, Kids Recital, etc) and provide the date. The date can be exact (1992-May, or 1992-May-12), seasonal (1995-Summer), or broad (2000). Then click the Blue button. In seconds, the stack of photos feeds through the scanner and you have a series of sequentially-numbered JPEGs saved in a named folder. You can have it add more scans to the folder if the collection of photos from a particular event are more than will go through the scanner in one pass (about 20). The Epson software is really well designed. It's clear they've spent a lot of time analysing real-world scanning work flows. My only gripe is that the scans all have a very slight bluish cast. I've searched for a ColorSync profile that might correct this, but haven't found one. The Epson software includes an 'auto-enhance' option that does a pretty good job at removing it, but I'd rather the scans be colour-accurate to begin with. Even with this minor flaw, I highly recommend the FastFoto scanner. With it, I might actually complete my family scanning project this year.

I Have owned many Epson PRoducts since the mid 90's PRimarily large format Printers that i used in my Digital Graphics Studios. For me Epson was a late comer to the Scanner industry as in the early years i used Zerox and other Industrial Scanners. I am Retired now and found literally boxes and boxes of 60 years work of Photos needing Digitising. I bought the FF640 High Speed Photo and have scanned over 5000 Photos all at 600 DPI dual Sides in one pass. What is cool in the single pass dual sides featuer is that it only scans the second side if there is something on it. A thirty five photo hopper at 1 second a scan makes short work of a pile of photos in no time. True colour fidelity and hereto for unheard of scanning speeds for a self feeding photo machine.. A Must buy for any serious Archivist looking to digitize a life time of film and living. i have also started to digitised over 700 liner notes from my Favourite CDs and dual scanning side of three leaf page and booket liner notes Was a nice feature. It Comes complete with digitising and Cataloguing software which gets you on your way fast. All my Photos are now nicely catalogued on my system and cloud backup with Google Photos.

I purchased this scanner after reviewing many other products. It did all of the required tasks - fast, convenient - and efficiently. I scanned thousand and thousands of photos in a matter of a few short days. It scans both front and back of a photo, at the same time, so notations on the back, etc. are copied as well. I downloaded all photos to my desk top computer, as well as a Seagate independent drive, and threw out the bins and bins of paper photos. I now actually LOOK at the photos I have taken over my life! Well worth the price paid.