Our Mission at Scan A Lot
Our Comprehensive Services
Explore our wide range of digitization services designed to preserve your memories:
About Scan A Lot: How We Work
About Scan A Lot in one sentence: a small, family-run digitization lab in West Hempstead, New York, that has been converting photographs, film, tape and audio to digital since 2006.
Why we started
The same reason most customers call us — a box of family material that nobody could watch anymore. Equipment to play these formats disappeared from homes long before the memories stopped mattering.
How we work
Everything is done in our own lab. Your originals are logged in, inspected, cleaned where needed, and transferred one item at a time on professional decks and scanners rather than automated batch machines. They are logged out again when they return to you with your digital files.
What we will always tell you
If a tape is not worth transferring, we say so. If a restoration will not deliver what you hope, we say that too. Twenty years of this work has taught us that honest expectations produce happier customers than optimistic promises.
Serving Long Island and beyond
Customers visit from across Nassau County, Suffolk County and New York City, and ship to us from across the country via our mail-in service.
Further reading: the Library of Congress publishes free preservation guidance for home collections.
The equipment matters
Consumer capture devices exist, and people try them. The results are usually disappointing because the weak link is not the computer, it is the deck playing the tape. We use professional decks with time base correctors, dedicated film scanners that photograph each frame individually, and flatbed and feed scanners chosen per material type.
The people matter more
Every transfer is monitored while it runs. A machine will happily digitize twenty minutes of static without complaint; a person notices, stops, cleans the heads and starts again. That is the actual difference between a professional transfer and a cheap one.
What twenty years teaches you
That most collections contain three or four irreplaceable items and a lot of ordinary ones — and the customer does not always know which is which until they see them again. That tape does not last as long as people assume. And that the job is rarely just technical: we are handling the record of somebody’s family.
Photo and Slide Scanning
Convert your treasured photographs and slides into high-resolution digital images, ensuring they are preserved for future generations.
Video Tape to Digital Transfers
Transform your old video tapes into digital formats, making it easy to relive and share your favorite moments.
Audio Cassette and Reel Digitization
Preserve your audio recordings by converting cassettes and reels into digital files, maintaining the sound quality of your memories.
Microfilm and Microfiche Scanning
Digitize your microfilm and microfiche collections for easy access and long-term preservation, ensuring important information is never lost.
Why Choose Us
Our Key Features
19 Years of Expertise
With nearly two decades in the media digitization industry, we bring unparalleled experience to every project.
High-Resolution Scanning
We ensure your memories are preserved in stunning detail with our state-of-the-art scanning technology.