As recommended by readers of Electric Speed, October 2026

• My old but trusty Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II has adjustable settings for docs, photos, and slides (including my late mother’s glass-plate ones)—300 dpi for photos and docs, to 1200 dpi for the denser data in slides. What will I do when it stops working? —Colin Buchanan
• I use a portable flatbed scanner unless I’m somewhere that requires me to use my phone. Over the years, I’ve had three or four inexpensive CanoScan models that are convenient both at home and to take to archives or relatives’ homes. That way I can choose which format to save the result in (TIF, JPG, PDF, etc.). When I need to use my phone, I get JPG files that I forget to download and use. Which reminds me that I need to download all those photos I took, when visiting a relative’s vintage shop, of a set of seriously unhinged letters written by my great-aunt. —Karla Huebner
• I had more than 50 journals that I’ve carried across two countries and more than a dozen apartments. I was thrilled to learn that the mobile Dropbox app has a built-in scanner, which uses the phone’s camera. The scans are compiled in a PDF and saved to a folder in the user’s Dropbox. The trick, though, is to stay alert while scanning hundreds of pages. To my dismay, after I tossed the physical journals, I found about five journals’ worth of individual page scans in my Camera Roll, rather than as a PDF in Dropbox. —Sarah Chauncey
• I bought a wonderful scanner for copying photos, documents, letters, and everything else. It is the Epson FastFoto FF-680W. It is expensive, but it has been worth every penny. (I’m in the UK.) It even enhances the photos. I ordered mine from a company in Australia, but it seems to be more readily available now. —Jennifer Buckle
• I use a portable scanner, the Epson WorkForce ES-50, to scan old documents and photos. It plugs into a USB port in my laptop, so it doesn’t require a separate power source. This is a wonderful option for going to a storage unit to scan items housed there, because there typically are not any electrical outlets in those units. —Sue Lane
• Scanner on my desk is an old Epson FastFoto. The software is a little clunky, but wow, is it durable and effective. Newer models are even better, I’m told. —Tony Levelle
• I’ve found the Epson Perfection V600 Photo scanner to be fantastic for both photos (prints or slides) and documents, offering resolutions up to 9600 dpi for photos and 1200 dpi for documents. The scanner’s Color Restoration function brings old, faded Polaroids back to resplendent life, and three levels of Backlight Correction restore clarity and detail to photos that are veiled by excessive shadows. The V600 can also scan photo negatives, but I haven’t had a reason to use that function yet. —Michael Cooper
• I use an old Epson V330 scanner that feeds into an Epson Scan 2 running on my desktop Mac mini. The big advantage of a scanner over a phone is you automatically get a flat image and the option to get high resolution. When you use a phone, you almost inevitably record the image from an angle, and it shows in the phone image. That’s fine for taking a snapshot to show the plumber what’s leaking in the basement, or pictures of the kids, but it can’t match a scanner for a flat image of a printed page. The scanner is more than a decade old, but Epson has kept the software updated (most recently in 2025), and other software is available. Epson Scan can produce files in PDF or several image files. —Jeff Hecht
• Photos: The Google PhotoScan app works well. The source image can even be partly in shadow or glare, and you get a clean image. Documents: I generally only do this when I need to get a long number off a printed document (like the tracking number from a USPS receipt). Then I take a photo and use the iOS Photos app. Tap the text recognition button, then select and copy the needed text. Works well with skewed images and wrinkled/creased paper. —Dave Brewer
• For scanning photos, I use the PhotoScan app (from Google). I like that it’s quick and easy to use and you don’t have to worry about glare because it takes an image from multiple angles. —Zev Lawson Edwards
• I found this tool very useful after I finished handwriting my first (and so far, only) novel-length manuscript. I hadn’t typed it into a Word document as I wrote. There’s a moment when you die inside just thinking about typing 75k words into a document. In my digging around to find ways to convert the handwritten document into text, I discovered Handwriting OCR. It was reasonably priced and does a surprisingly good job at converting my chicken scratching into accurate digital text. —Tillie Fratilli
• For big jobs (like scanning some magazine writing I did pre-internet for inclusion on my website), I use my trusty HP OfficeJet. For small jobs, I use either the Apple Notes app or the Yahoo Mail app for iPhone, which is easy to use. Lately, I’ve been dreading scanning the pile of book translation contracts from my days as a literary translator. I had to consult them recently, as several of my translations were involved in the Anthropic lawsuit, and I’m sad to report that in only one of the three books did I retain the translation copyright (and hence am entitled to a piece of the payout). —Carol Volk
• My current toolbox for digitizing old letters, documents, or photos consists of two tools: my iPhone 15 and AI. Here are a couple of examples: To digitize a family history book that was printed in 1972, I used my iPhone to take a photo of every page that I wanted. Then I uploaded those files to Claude with instructions to convert the files to text verbatim and provide a Markdown file for download. I used Claude to transcribe pages from censuses, marriage registries, old army records, and other documents. I found that it was important to tell Claude to not “interpret” or guess at anything. If there was something it couldn’t read, it needed to say so explicitly. In my working life, I was a professional photographer, so you can imagine that I’m picky about photo quality. Given that, I’ve been satisfied with the quality of the iPhone 15 photos of old photos. When I want to really be picky about the quality of a digital copy of a photo, then I use my DSLR and the copy stand I built for less than $100. —Scott Gilbertson
• How do I digitize documents: For things I can’t scan, I simply take a photo and upload it to my computer. I edit out excess borders, edit the size, etc., using the free app IrfanView. But most things I can scan, using my little and cheap Epson printer’s scanning capability, which works well. —Patricia Young
• This suggestion may not be practical in onesie, twosie situations, but it may help your readers. Our downtown library has a wonderful Makerspace, which includes a digital scanning station. I have used it to scan old photos, old slides (remember slide projectors?), and even converted two of my dad’s Super 8 movies to digital format. Recently, my uncle sent my brother 30+ letters my dad wrote to his mother in 1945 when Dad was stationed in England during WWII. I encouraged my brother to check out the Makerspace at his local library so he can convert the letters to digital format so all of us kids can have a copy of Dad’s letters. —Bill Leinweber
• My Brother printer has a built-in scanner. For photos, I take a picture of it. Since you’re talking about documents, I discovered that Microsoft OneNote has an OCR function built in. I republish a lot of public-domain material for my books, so I take a clear picture of the page, load it into OneNote, right-click on it, and fix in Word. Not bad. —Bill Peschel
• I bought this Plustek photo scanner to digitize old photos. It works great and takes no time at all, and I highly recommend. It could also be used for letters or documents, but as a trained arts conservator with a specialization in paper, I am reluctant to submit old or fragile paper to the heat and bending of this machine. Instead, I just use the scanning app in my iPhone, which is a fantastic quality. If it’s truly an archival work on paper, then I would ask a local library or museum if they have suggestions for an archival scanning service (they often have this equipment themselves but do not provide the service, but at least they can provide a reliable referral). —Sandhya Jain-Patel
• For scanning documents and photos, Plustek is the best! —Gaye Gronlund
• I use a Samsung Galaxy Fold, and the camera app contains a scanning component. I usually use the documents setting. If the document is to be used for more intensive detail, for instance evidence of its use over time, I think I would want to use the highest quality available, after I have seen the original. —Anne Foaster