I know nothing about scanning slides... but you can Buy a photo scanner that does slides ?
HP Scanjet G4010 Photo Scanner $135 /or/ G3010 $100

Or upgrade to the C7180 all in one that says it does slides.

Here is a link that might be useful: Scanning 35mm photo slides: tips, hints, and ideas from HP

I have not tried this but---. I have an Epson scanner that included several black plastic "carriers," one of which is for 35mm slides. After placing the slides (up to 6) in the carrier, they can be scanned and saved or printed. You may want to try this: trim and cut a sheet of black construction paper (or perhaps any piece of paper) to fit the size of the slide, scan it, save it, resize it, crop if necessary and try printing. Start with one slide to see if you can work it okay, then progress to two or more. Avoid trying to print without cropping or you may use up your ink faster than you want.

Thanks for both your quick responses! My C6180 is a new purchase so an upgrade right now is out...but I surely wish now that I had thought about all those slides and bought the 7180 instead!! Given the price of the Scanjet vs. retail photo shop prices... now thats a distinct possibility! I'll mull this over..meanwhile, certainly no loss to try black construction paper!! Heck, that may work!

I scanned 1200 slides a long time ago and in retrospect I made mistakes, many mistakes. Take that as my resume and read on perhaps LOL.

May I suggest you first concentrate on the scanning and forget the printing till the first job is complete. Also I would recommend doing some test scans before embarking on the real task - this I failed to do and regret it. Try scanning at 200% and save as bitmaps (bmp) for a higher quality file than the jpg. You might consider cropping as needed during the scan to remove excess background on some shots although this can be easily done after all the scans are completed. Sure the bitmaps may create 2 or 3 megabyte files but you are trying to save stuff of value to you so only the highest quality attainable should be good enough.

Once you have all the scans done you can use photo editing software to lighten or darken those that need attention. If you have no such software the free Irfanview will do the job but be sure to download the plug ins as well as the main program.

When I did mine I was loaned a stand alone slide scanner that cost $1,500 new but was ancient when I got to use it. Each slide needed to be set up, some brightened, darkened or cropped as needed then named before saving mistakenly as jpg files. The scanners of today are no doubt worlds apart from the one Noah loaned me.

I purchased a photo scanner, a low cos Epson V100 at a end cost of about $60, Epson gave a $40 rebate which was quickly delivered.

This is a photo scanner1 It comes with a frame to hold 4 slides at a time, as well as negatives and hard copy photos. It has a high resolution scan, i.e., is a Photo scanner, not a general purpose 300 bpi copier/scanner, as is usual in the multipurpose Printer/Scanner/FAX/Copier, which I have in a Epson. Importantly, the V100 has a back-light mechanism, so it shined a light through the slide into the scanner. It come with smart software, that'll do almost everything automatically, including determining how many slides you have in the "tray". It does also provide software means to edit the photo quality, I have not tried any of the more advanced "stuff". So, if still available, $60 for a special purpose photo (slide) scanner shouldn't crimp too many budgets.

Owbist, Oh, what lessons hard learned!! Must have taken you forever to scan so many slides. I will remember the lesson here and to save as bmps. Thank you for sharing so much information with me. Jerry, the V100 does look like the one I need. I don't see an offered $40 rebate any longer on the Epson site, but I can handle the $100. Probably going to be a dead of winter project, but well worth the effort to save something irreplaceable. Thank you for pointing me in that direction.

Yes, you can use a digital camera to convert slides to digital files. It depends on what accessories your camera manufacturer offers. A few years ago when Nikon was selling their 900 series, they also offered a slide conversion kit. The camera mounted to the kit and the kit had a backlight to illuminate the slides. The slides would be saved to whatever format the camera supported, and at camera supported resolution.

I have a cousin who at one time did commerical photography for advertisments. He had shots from around the world at exotic locations - including models. He convertered about 3000 slides using his Nikon.

So, it depends on what accessories are offered. A fast way to transfer the photos to disk or other storage media is to insert a large capacity memory card into the camera, say 1 GB or more and shoot away. When the card is full, pull the card and place into a card reader and copy the photos to the storage media of your choice.

While you at the task, it is advisable to check you work. Review the slides before copying to permanent media to see if adjustments in exposure, etc. are needed. The copy process will faithfully copy dirt and scratches as well.

If you have MicroSoft Office 2000 or other, you may have a viewer hidden away. To find this viewer, got to Programs> Microsoft Office Tools > MicroSoft Photo Editor. It's not a full featured editor, but what it does, it does well, and works great for reviewing.

A caveat: While the camera memory card is in the reader, do not perform any operation that writes back to the camera card other than simple deletion. Each camera manufacturer has their own propertiary formatting scheme, and that can be fouled if you perform a "write" to the card with anything else except the camera.

Storage Media: You should give some thought to the choice of final storage media. For example, 10 years later, will equipemnt be available to read the media? How permanent is the media? Maybe it would be wise to set up a calendar to remind yo to copy the media every 5 years or so.

I do not advise depending on thumb drives, although these have improved greatly over the past 5 years. Thunb drives are great for temporary storage, but these do have a limited life. Each junction can withstand about 10,000 rewrites before these fail. Memroy cards these days employ 'leveling' schemes to level out the wear over the entire card, not just the front end of the card. This scheme has improved life by a goodly factor, but someday, a jucntion will eventually fail and that file will be damaged. If the damage occurs in the directory, the entire card may be lost. I am not privy to the internals of today's cards, but in the beginning, these cards had an internal, keep-alive battery that was good for about 10 years.

I have been tussling with this storage problem and do not have a satisfactory solution for long term storage of sensitive documents. The best that I have at the moment is external hard drives and CDs and DVDs. Nothing yet matches the old time technology of well processed photos. For example, I have several dagurreotypes (tin types) from which I have made acceptable copies. These images were over 150 years old. I also have photos that are over 100 years old that have proven useful in my genealogical research. So far, digital storage can not match this record.

I had some old slides and tried scanning them . I have my old HP ScanJet 4300C scanner
I just put it on the bed and scanned. Then went to Irfanview and did some cropping and lightening. They came out pretty good. Some not at all. A lot of work. Worth a try for the few you might want to keep. This was my mom and her grandsons in 1958

Here is a link that might be useful:

The household pro photographer now uses a D80 to copy slides. He mounts it on a tripod and shoots, then saves them to CD (I won't let him get an external drive until he learns some "computer housekeeping" skills, he'd have it full in no time). We have scanners and he still has his old animation cameras that he used to use to dupe slides, but using a good digital camera works better. He also uses it to make copies of old, old photos that are fading. He then runs them through Photoshop, hides the blemishes that time created, and voila, a "new" old pic.

Granted this is not a cheap solution, just depends on how valuable your old slides are to you.