Want to take your old photos online? We were just looking through some slides we scanned with an old flatbed a few years ago. They look terrible. But we're not willing to invest in a high quality Nikon Coolscan; we don't have the money or the space. So when we came across this tiny little scanner, instead of scoffing at it as inferior quality, we gave it a second look.
And what we found, well the quality isn't great scanning only 1829 dpi (vs. 4000 dpi on Nikon's low end model). But for some jobs 1829 would be plenty, and if you're just looking to get a quick digital copy of a file, this would probably do the trick.
In these cases, I use the eBay rent-it program (my words). And I did just that, last month, for this very thing. I bought a used Nikon Coolscan V for about $500. I have not started my project yet, I have about 1100 negatives to scan. When I am finished with my scanning (hopefully in 2 months time?), then I will sell the Coolscan scanner on ebay, for about $500. Sometimes you lose money, sometimes you gain money. This has worked out well for me on more than one occasion. I also plan to buy a powermac G5 for a grand, to do all the cpu work for this project, and then sell it when I'm done.
Here is a list of online places that will scan your negatives and slides, all of which I found while researching this last year. So, I don't know if they are still valid.
COSTCO Photo Center
http://www.myspecialphotos.com/
http://www.britepix.com/
http://www.digmypics.com/
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Of course if you're going to pay for a scan, and you have some really detailed slides, like Fuji 50 or Kodachrome 25 or 64, think about finding a vendor that does drum scans (you'll have to specify you want RGB, as the default is CMYK with its limited gamut). I had some drum scans from from Fuji 50 on 6x6 film and I was spoiled after that.
I have a Nikon Coolscan 2000 that scans @ 2700 DPI (bought it new about 10 years ago). That's plenty of resolution for 35mm. It's at least good enough for 16x20 prints. You really don't want to go much bigger than 16x20 from 35mm anyway, at least not when you've seen prints/scans from 6x6 film.
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