I’ll just add that scanning a shoebox full of slides or prints is a tedious process, no matter how you slice it. If you haven’t bought a scanner yet, you might want to consider all the alternatives first. Considering that you probably can’t scan faster than a rate of about 60 slides an hour or so, you might consider what your time is worth.
You can have a commercial service do it professionally (with dust removal, etc.) for between 20 and 25 cents a slide. It sounds like a lot, but if you have 500 slides, that would represent a weekend of scanning on your part. And you have to buy a $150 film scanner. Consider that you can get those 500 slides scanned professionally at a site like http://www.fotobridge.com or http://www.scancafe.com for around $150, then sending them out starts to sound like a good deal. You’ll get top quality from the pro site; you’ll get them back on DVD, so you don’t have to worry about the added time burning disks yourself; and you won’t be stuck with an un-needed scanner cluttering up your space.
If you still want to do the scanning yourself, consider one other option: a dedicated slide scanner from Plustek.
Back in the late ‘90’s, many photographers wanted to scan slides, and a variety of slide scanners became available just for that purpose. They cost in the $500 range, but they did a good job and were quick. Some of them had slide auto-feeder trays to scan your stack of slides while you walk away. Mostly, they were geared toward pro photographers, but consumers bought them too. Nikon, Kodak, Minolta, Polaroid, and others offered them. Well, lo and behold, photography shifted to digital, and most photographers had converted their slides already, so no one needed them any more, and all those models were all discontinued, except the most expensive ones for commercial use.
The only company I know of that still makes a dedicated affordable filmstrip/slide scanner is Plustek. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias=aps&field;-keywords=plustek+slide+scanner
It scans a tray of 4 slides in 2 minutes. The Canon model recommended by Suzanne is similar - it too scans only 4 slides at a time - it is a versatile flatbed scanner that isn’t optimized for scanning slides. That’s good if you want it for other uses; Plustek’s slide scanner is better if you want a device optimized for the fastest and best quality slide scanning.
But you can’t beat the quality you’ll get by sending out your dad’s slides to a professional scanning service. They have the best equipment to do things like color correction, lint removal, etc… and they take care of the time-consuming task of burning to DVD. You’ll get your original slides back in original condition and everything is fully guaranteed.
You just have to estimate what your time is worth, and whether it’s better to send it out. In estimating your time, consider all the steps - loading the trays, unloading the trays, burning to DVD, re-scanning when you realized you put it in backwards, trouble with installation, etc. If you have a shoebox of items to scan, be they prints, slides, or negatives, you will probably thank yourself to send the work out, and you may even come out ahead cost-wise! On the other hand, if you already own a scanner or want to get one for other reasons, go ahead and give scanning a try! You can always bail and send the stuff out later.
