I fairly recently bought an Epson V700 flatbed scanner, which is also a film/slide scanner. It's specifically designed for the job, and is actually very good. It will scan at up to 6400 DPI, although I've found for 35mm slides the results are excellent at 1200DPI.

I bought it for scanning medium format film, and it's probably overkill for 35mm. That said, it will do 12 at once fairly quickly, and th epson software is quite competent for all but professional use.

Their previous model, the 4990, has dropped considerably in price since the newer ones came out, and is also very good at slide scanning, it just doesn't go as high in resolution. It might be worth seeking out one of these second'hand on ebay.

Bitt, be warned: it is a slow process regardless of method, and it's a real pain trying to get and keep all the dust off the scanner and film, without damaging the latter. The higher resolution you scan at the worse the problem. Done right, though, the results are impressive.

pca