As part of my latest book, The First 5 Years, I'm using some of my Dad's fifty year old old 35mm slides, but how to get them into the computer?

Digital scanning costs about $2 per slide and there is around 400 of them; it seems like a big expense. So, I have been experimenting with fixing the slide to the screen of my laptop, making the desktop bright white, and photographing the slide with a macro lens; it didn't work out so well.

This is what I came up with: an old slide projector, a light box made out of a paper box and a digital camera with macro lens. It worked so well that I'm converting the lot; all 400 slides. Guess I'll have to surrender the kitchen bench and cutting board eventually!