The Best Ways To Safely Mail Photos and Videos
When working with a photo and film digitization expert, professionals will require an original copy of the material to ensure a seamless conversion. Often, you may need to mail photos and videos to a team of experts. While using your local postal service is a common practice, the process of ensuring materials remain safe during transport can leave you with many unanswered questions.
Will your photos arrive intact? How should you pack photos and videos? In this article, we’ll establish the best ways to safely mail photos and videos so that you can ensure your content remains secure and protected throughout the conversion process.
Photo Albums
When mailing photo albums, it helps to stack them on top of one another and include a layer of bubble wrap between each album. Placing photo albums with the spines facing down risks damaging the element’s integrity, leaving the entire album vulnerable to disintegration.
If photos within the album are loose and can potentially fall out, it’s best to use a rubber band around the front and back covers to keep pages together.
Slides
Ideally, packing slides in sleeves before placing them in additional packaging is the best solution for protection. However, if you don’t have sleeves readily accessible, you can place material in individual bags to avoid grouping multiple loose slides that could slip through cracks.
If placing slides in bags, you’ll want to rubber band a group together; you can typically pack a group of 20 to 30 slides without issue. You can also use plastic wrap or tinfoil containers to keep all slides in one area.
Individual Photos
Individual photos are among the easiest to damage in the mail. Prints can bend and warp due to their thin nature. You’ll want to avoid using paper clips or rubber bands on delicate media since these items can create indentations and markings.
If using rubber bands to group photos, consider grouping prints of the same size together to avoid bending or loosening. It also helps to reinforce shipping boxes with edging or durable folders that can hold prints during transport.
Tapes and Film Reels
While tapes can fit into a box, it helps to reinforce boxes with bubble wrap to secure the materials. If mailing multiple tapes, group media with rubber bands to prevent them from shuffling around during transport. Avoid cramping large amounts of film and videotapes into one box; obtaining a larger container or multiple allows you to position media and packaging material without risking damage.
Learning the best ways to safely mail photos and videos can ensure that material remains secure, intact, and undamaged during the transport, conversion, and return processes.
If your materials are valuable, which most are, you may want to consider shipping your materials with a ground handling company that can provide a tracking number. This will allow you to follow your package’s journey from pickup to delivery. If you are located in the metro-NYC area, take advantage of DiJiFi’s in-house pickup and delivery service. DiJiFi will come to your home or office, pick up your materials and will return them to you once your project is complete. Your materials will be handled with the utmost care.
It helps to trust in an organization like DiJiFi that prioritizes original film and photo quality. From 8mm and 16mm to 35mm and Super 8, our film to digital service is top of the class! Our team continues to master methods that produce crisp, immaculate imagery without sacrificing quality. Contact us through our DiJiFi webpage for a free estimate on your project and to learn more about our services.