I've used a scanner for years and never had a problem with the size of my photos.  I simply save as JPEG format.  Is there an option with your scanner to save the photos as a particular format, such as JPEG?    Also, are you able to change the resolution for scanned images?  The higher the dpi (dots per inch) the larger the file size will be.    If you can change these two options, give it a try and see if that makes any difference.

yes there is, i used the PNG option but will try the JPEG

& from memory the dpi was 300