I've decided that I need to digitise my slide collection and so need a decent slide scanner.

I do have one but it is ancient and needs a SCSII interface and I expect the drivers for Win 7 are not available so thought I might as well go for something more up to date.

So, can anyone recommend a decent, relatively inexpensive scanner that will give me good results?

TIA

The conventional wisdom is that dedicated film scanners are better than flatbeds but that ceased to be the case several years ago. The Epson flatbeds give great results.

I used an Epson V300 - current model V370 - cost around ?100. Personally I would get the V550 (about ?170) as it covers MF as well as 35mm.

Cleanliness is vital if you don't want to spend endless hours zapping dust spots with Photoshop's clone tool. Invest in a good dust sucker too.

I scanned my huge collection using a CANOSCAN 9000F. Slow job and not cheap but excellent quality.  But you could sell it afterwards? 

Mudman, if you want a dedicated slide/neg. scanner, you're looking at spending a few hundred pounds. They are aimed at professional applications. There are cheaper (very cheap!) ones around but they are novelties, giving terrible results.

The other option, as said above, is a flatbed photo scanner and these give very acceptable results. All the photos I showed at the 'slideshow' I did for the club recently, were scanned on an Epson V370 (not at full res.) and I think looked fine on the screen? It cost about ?80-?90. Each scan took 2-3 minutes (this would be longer at full res.) so it is a slow job. You can load up to four slides or 6 negs. at a time usually. It's possible to get models with external feeders, which must speed the process up as there's less loading and unloading to do.

I've recently scanned a load of prints, for a Facebook group I'm setting up, at a fairly low res. This took way less than a minute per scan, although they don't display at full screen so I may have to do them again!

Depending on how much you want to spend, good quality dedicated film scanners (plus flatbeds can be had on ebay) its just a matter of waiting. I picked up a Nikon Coolscan iv ed in mint condition at a fraction of the new price.
As has been mentioned you can always re sell at a similar price when you have finished if needs be.
Another thing to be aware of is that it is not just the hardware that produces the best results but other propriety software packages are available which can improve on both the quality and ease of scanning.
Try searching for Silverfast and Vue scan.
Some of these allow you to down load free trials first so you can compare scans from the same slide.
I prefer the Vue scan personally.

I have scanned several thousand slides with Minolta dimage Elite 500 scanners bought on ebay. Av price about 200. Mind you I am on the third one and it's slowly dying I think. However the quality of the images is superb.  E.g. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Minolta-DiMAGE-Scan-Elite-5400-scanner-35mm-/142095285119?hash=item211589fb7f:g:ZtEAAOSwU-pXvGXc

I've got the Epson V550, and am beginning to scan a slide collection now, though only with the bundles Epson software - I haven't used it for positives until now, but it seems pretty good, and the auto-dust removal feature (Digital ICE) is surprisingly effective, if a little slow. I bought the scanner for paper documents, so I'm very happy that the extra functionality is finally getting used, but I guess if I only had slides to do, it might be a different matter.

I'm one of those people who still use film a lot (my 40 year old Olympus 35 RC rangefinder and Ilford XP2 is awesome) and the Canoscan 9000F is on my shortlist.  I wonder  if anyone can illuminate: Does it work on a Mac?  What resolution can it practically (as opposed to marketing blurb) scan to?  I'm talking 35mm slides and negatives here, but any thoughts on medium format or large format would be appreciated. I tried one of the cheapo slide scammers and they are rubbish.

Here's some info about Olympus Rangefinders http://kenrockwell.com/olympus/35rc.htm

Thanks chaps.

I did remember last night that I have a sort of projector jobbie that I inherited but have never used.

So last night I gave it a go. From the examples I've attached, you can see that the results are not up to much so I don't think I'll bother with it. I would probably get better results from putting them on a lightbox and photographing them directly.
I'll have a look at some of the options posted above. Might be something to ask Santa for.

Although now that I look at those pictures, I may be able to improve them as it could be due to the way I set up everything. I shall report back accordingly. 

mudman said:

I've decided that I need to digitise my slide collection and so need a decent slide scanner.

I do have one but it is ancient and needs a SCSII interface and I expect the drivers for Win 7 are not available so thought I might as well go for something more up to date.

So, can anyone recommend a decent, relatively inexpensive scanner that will give me good results?

TIA

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If you have the SCSI card, then you can pick up a WinXP (or earlier) box for, well, peanuts if not free. No need for it to be fast just to scan in and transfer to another machine. If your scanner is a good quality one (They almost always were), then that would be my route.