Alternatives to Photo Scanning

In the absence of an automatic photo scanner that makes scanning documents, photographs, receipts, and other files easy, how would you go about making duplicates or digital copies of your printed files?
Perhaps you have a photo scanner but it takes considerable time to scan a single colored picture, and you have hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures that need to be digitized. And patience happens to be not one of your strongest virtues.
Here are a couple of alternatives to photo scanning:

• One alternative would be to send your documents or pictures to a scanning service. Most likely, you'll find the quality very satisfactory. After all, that's the only way they will get you to avail of their services again should you need scanning services in the future. But you might have second thoughts about this alternative if your documents and images are confidential in nature.
• The other alternative which I could highly recommend, largely because it's something that I do often, is to photograph your files. Yes, if it's pictures you need to digitize, you photograph the photographs. What you need are a camera, either a point-and-shoot or a DSLR, a tripod, and good lighting. By lighting, I don't mean those fancy flash equipment or reflectors you find in a photo studio. You just need enough light so that no shadow or light reflections fall on the document you photograph.
  The procedure is simple, as follows:
  
  1. You can work on a flat surface such as a table or even the floor. Set up your tripod. The height of the tripod depends on the size of your document and the focal distance capability of your camera. Usually, If it's just a regular 5R printed picture, the tripod may be set up low. The bigger the document, the higher up the tripod and camera needs to be elevated.
  2. After the right setup is achieved, with the camera now pointing straight down. I usually set the focus to manual. In point-and-shoot cameras, this may not be an option. The difference in time saved though is just in milli-seconds, so it's not really a big deal. In case your tripod does not allow pointing the camera straight down vertically, you may adjust it to however low it allows.
  3. Lay the document or picture to be digitized right under the camera. In case the camera is pointing at an angle, place the document accordingly so that it's surface is perpendicular to the line of sight of the camera. This might mean using an inclined book stand or anything stable to lean the document on.
  4. If you have a cable shutter, it would be best as you could click away immediately without the risk of producing camera shake. Using the camera's built in timer can do the trick similarly but this will add a few seconds to the procedure. If the available light is good, however, the shutter speed usually would be fast enough so the effect of camera shake, even if you use your fingers to click directly on the shutter button, is negligible.
  5. If the size of your documents are uniform, that would be good. Otherwise, you would have to group them in similar sizes. If there is some other order that could override this, like the need to order them chronologically, then you may have to settle with having to adjust the lens' focal distance and orientation with each document. If this proves to be hard work, then you may do without it. You'll need to do cropping and re-orientation post-processing work afterwards though, on your computer.
  6. Lastly, you download the digitized images on your computer.

And, that's it. An alternative to scanning photos. The quality is comparable, if not even better. An automatic photo scanner is an awesome technology, but as discussed here, technology also offered other options.