My Dad took literally 1000's of slides in his life. He passed away last year and I have all of his slides. I am really only interested in the ones of the family and I am looking at some way to store them. I would like to put the best ones on CD's. I know some scanners say that they will scan them. Does any one know what the quality is like? Is it worth it? Is there any other way to put them on CD's?

Jan i believe that for a good quality and colors you have to give the slides at a very good photolab and they will put the slides on a CDs

The quality of scanners dedicated to negatives/slides is very good! Even the top models of flatbed scanners scan well slides but it is usually like 6 at once. Be sure there is a good software for removing dust included with the scanner.
Another solution is to buy a tool you add to your camera and you take photos of your slides using the macro mode. It also work well. Time consuming though.
I will get you more information this weekend when I am back to London :)

Olly

Thanks Olly. Any information would be appreciated. My brother has a scanner that does slides, but he doesn't think it does a very good job.

I think one of my photo programs removes dust. I will have to check.

What kind of scanners does your brother have? The software has to be the one used for scanning. It removes dust while scanning and it is needed because without it you enlarges the dust/scratch etc...
I know the top flatbed scanners from Epson and Canon have it included. More this weekend when I am back in London :)
I too have tons of slides I need to scan.

Olly

By brothers scanner is a HP. He doesn't know the model. He says it is supposed to remove dust.

I will post the result of the reviews I have in several magazines but there is no HP selected as good, only Epson and Canon were selected as good flatbed scanners and Nikon/Minolta as dedicated film/slides scanners. The main advantage of the dedicated slides/negatives scanners is the time. On a flatbed scanner it can take 6 minutes per slide...

Olly

I will post the result of the reviews I have in several magazines but there is no HP selected as good, only Epson and Canon were selected as good flatbed scanners and Nikon/Minolta as dedicated film/slides scanners. The main advantage of the dedicated slides/negatives scanners is the time. On a flatbed scanner it can take 6 minutes per slide...

Olly

I guess if HP is not on the list, it might explain why my brothers doesn't do a good job.

Six minutes per slide is pretty slow. I can't imagine buying a scanner that only does slides and negatives. Of course it would depend on the price, which I imagine is expensive. :)

I am also thinking about a flatbed scanner that does all :)
According to two magazines it seems the Epson Perfection 4990 with its ICE anti dust is the best followed by the Canon Canonscan 9950F (apparently with this one you can scan up to 30 views en 24x36mm by batch). Both are slow and cost about 500 euro (but I believe online we can find less expensive prices).
Then there is the Canon Canonscan 8400F with a good quality for value (about 220 euro). Only cons with it is it does not do well with underexposed films and the scans are a little too flashy.

With film scanners, the best are the Nikon Coolscan 9000 (3,000 euro...) and the Nikon Coolscan 5000 (1,600 euro...). You can scan 50 slides at once and they are fast. With the flatbed scanners, they say it takes almost half an hour to scan at 2,500 dpi a 6x6 photo when using the ICE mode against dust.
I would still ask a photolab first and do the maths to see which is the best (in money, but also time).

Olly

Thanks Olly! I've been checking into some reviews online and I was beginning to come to the same conclusion. I will have to check and see what it costs a photo lab. :)

Olly I really appreciate all your help. I've been looking into getting slides scanned. I also ran into this and I wonder what you think?
http://www.photosolve.com/main/product/xtendaslide/index.html

I almost purchased the Nikon ES-1 (you can see it at http://web.mit.edu/cai/www/nikon/ES1.html) which is similar to the Xtend-a-Slide link you posted but I did not because it would take months to scan all the slides one by one. I read it worked well if the slide is perfect (no scratch/dust/fingerprint) but apparently it is not easy to have the right exposure (depending on the light your using and the photo). You also need a camera that works well in macro.
There is also something similar at http://www.steves-digicams.com/happenstance.html but I think the company that produced it disappeared.

Here is an old review of a film scanner: http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001_reviews/nikon_coolscan4000.html
See the importance of the ICE dust/scratch cleaning. They are expensive but if you have to enhance photos manually it will be time consuming.

I am not going to get a new scanner now but I think it would be a good flatbed scanner. I would still try the photo lab first to test the quality of the scan and their price.