Best way to Scan Photos for Doc?

I'm working on a short documentary, and the individual I have interviewed for the documentary has given me a lot of old photographs to use.

Are there any recommendations on the best way to scan photos for video? I just have a standard HP printer with a flatbed scanner, which I have used to scan a few. But there seems to be a lot of noise and white marks that aren't on the photo.

I'm wondering if someone can point me in the right direction for the best way to scan them so they look great.
Should I try to track down a professional grade scanner? What is recommended in this type of situation?

Normally just scanning them with a multifunction printer does pretty well. I have an HP8600 multifunction printer and it does nearly as well as my Epson V700 scanner.

Generally you should not see additional noise and white marks that aren't on the photo. That may indicate something is wrong with your scanner or it's configured wrong. You could check this by scanning a "known good" photo which is clear and devoid of dust and scratches.

Some higher-end scanners like the V700 have Digital ICE which can scan images at two different wavelengths and do hardware-based dust & scratch removal. I have never seen this work well on prints, only transparencies. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_ICE

There is apparently significant variation in how manufacturers implement ICE. I used to have a Minolta Scan Elite 5400 II film scanner that used ICE4, and it worked very well on dust and scratch removal. The V700 does not work nearly so well, even on transparencies. In general ICE is designed for transparencies not prints, but Epson's documentation says it works on prints. In my experience it is not useful on prints, and I have to retouch by hand.

Some types of photos have very high resolution, such as black and white prints from 120 film, which is 2.4 inches wide: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/120_film In those cases scanning at high resolution can recover lots of detail. Color prints made from smaller film sizes don't carry as much resolution and often degrade with age.

You can sometimes clean prints before scanning them, but exercise extreme caution. Do not use alcohol or other general cleaning fluids. PEC-12 emulsion cleaner can work if used carefully: www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/71147-REG...c_Solutions_PEC.html Always make a safety scan of the item before you try to clean it.

In addition to the photos, I suggest asking whether they have old 35mm slides, which often have excellent archival durability relative to prints. People often squirrel these away in a shoebox, basement or storage chest and forget about them.

For many years some photo developers would supply the customer the developed film negatives along with the prints. Some people threw those away, others stored them and then forgot. Film negatives have much higher resolution than the prints and can be scanned. If your client has any old envelopes where the processed photos were returned, these could have developed film negatives in a side pocket. It is usually work asking about this.

People sometimes have old 8mm home movies, cassette audio or reel-to-reel magnetic tape stored somewhere. These can have good value in a documentary. It's good to ask about these.

Ok, I find that if I scan at 1200 DPI I notice some white spots/dust or whatever it is. At 600 there is considerably less or none of the same white spots showing up. But there is some loss in quality. Less detail in general it seems though, although more pixely in a way... I tried cleaning the photos and tray with a microfibre cloth, it seems like I can get some of the dust out but never can quite get it perfect. Not sure how the pros or Ken Burns have been doing it years so perfectly.

Also, should I scan as TIFFs or Jpegs?

I'd save them as PNG for quality.
Also, DPI simply determines what frame size you end up with in video. Let's say you're editing 1080 HD. Well that's a set frame size. DPI in your scan will effect how large (or small) that photo is in your timeline. 1200 DPI is fine, but how many pixel across, and how many high does that end up being? Compare that to your timeline frame size. So you could be blowing the image up larger, or shrinking it down too small in the Timeline, ether of which can cause issues. Scan at a DPI that will match more closely your timeline frame size.

Bigger documentary productions have a dedicated film restoration company handle the cleaning and scanning. Normally I don't see more white spots at 1200 than 600 dpi, so I don't understand that. If you can see noticeably more detail at 1200 dpi, that indicates the originals are pretty high res.

In general with archival photos you have to retouch each one by hand in photoshop. This actually goes pretty fast and there are various tutorials on this. Larry Jordan has a good class but there are many: larryjordan.com/store/photoshop-for-video-editors/

A typical video documentary using contemporary and some period video/film doesn't use that many stills -- say 10 to 20 over a 30 min program. Because of this, retouching them isn't that much work relative to the overall project. Obviously if lots of stills are used (like Ken Burns Civil War) then this is a bigger job.

The main point is don't retouch any photos until you are finished with the edit. There is no need to speculatively do time consuming dust and scratch removal on many photos which might not even be in the final cut. Just make the artistic decision based on the still composition, keeping in mind it can be technically improved later.

Once the edit is mostly locked, then retouch and optimize those few photos and import/replace the existing placeholder photos in the video.