I too have a large collection of old slides and negatives that I am currently in the process of digitizing. I first started trying to do this about 10 years ago using a flat bed scanner with a slide adapter. It was very tedious work and the results were not all that good. I then tried an inexpensive slide scanner and that was somewhat better but not the quality I wanted. I also tried one of the cheaper devices that has a slot for negatives and slides with a backlight and captures the image in a single exposure much like a camera would do. Again the quality of the image was not as good as I wished, but advances in technology might have made those type scanners better. I then purchased a Plustek Optifilm 7300 slide and negative scanner and I was much better satisfied with the results. The downside of that scanner is that it does not have infrared dust removal capability. I spent hours cleaning up dust spots and specs on the scanned images. I traded it in on a Plustek Optifilm 8200i which has about the same specifications and does have IR dust removal built in. Either way you choose, be aware that it is a time consuming and tedious job to scan and then process the image for satisfactory results. Whichever method you use, I strongly suggest you find a way to clean the slides and negatives first. There are tutorials on the internet with some good suggestions on how best to do that. On slides that have a build up of dust and grime, I use PEC 12 Archival Photographic Emulsion Cleaner available from some photo shops and Amazon. It is expensive but a little goes a long way and it can save hours of tying to clean up the image after the scan. I have added one slide and negative I have scanned. The autumn photo is a Fujicolor negative taken in 1993 and the Grand Canyon photo is a Kodachrome slide taken in 1983. By the way, Kodachrome can be difficult to capture, but the Optifilm scanners handle it very well.
