Isn't it funny how you can inherit a love for growing things? I was born with it....from digging up that first wild morning glory to spending my allowance on a pack of tomato seeds...even without a role model. I can't imagine what my green thumb would have looked like had I had a role model like your grandma! And you prove my point by posting the most incredible flower photos again and again and again. OMG am I jealous of some people! You are an incredibly lucky guy!

Yes, you can use a digital camera to convert slides to digital files. It depends on what accessories your camera manufacturer offers. A few years ago when Nikon was selling their 900 series, they also offered a slide conversion kit. The camera mounted to the kit and the kit had a backlight to illuminate the slides. The slides would be saved to whatever format the camera supported, and at camera supported resolution. I have a cousin who at one time did commerical photography for advertisments. He had shots from around the world at exotic locations - including models. He convertered about 3000 slides using his Nikon. So, it depends on what accessories are offered. A fast way to transfer the photos to disk or other storage media is to insert a large capacity memory card into the camera, say 1 GB or more and shoot away. When the card is full, pull the card and place into a card reader and copy the photos to the storage media of your choice. While you at the task, it is advisable to check you work. Review the slides before copying to permanent media to see if adjustments in exposure, etc. are needed. The copy process will faithfully copy dirt and scratches as well. If you have MicroSoft Office 2000 or other, you may have a viewer hidden away. To find this viewer, got to Programs> Microsoft Office Tools > MicroSoft Photo Editor. It's not a full featured editor, but what it does, it does well, and works great for reviewing. A caveat: While the camera memory card is in the reader, do not perform any operation that writes back to the camera card other than simple deletion. Each camera manufacturer has their own propertiary formatting scheme, and that can be fouled if you perform a "write" to the card with anything else except the camera. Storage Media: You should give some thought to the choice of final storage media. For example, 10 years later, will equipemnt be available to read the media? How permanent is the media? Maybe it would be wise to set up a calendar to remind yo to copy the media every 5 years or so. I do not advise depending on thumb drives, although these have improved greatly over the past 5 years. Thunb drives are great for temporary storage, but these do have a limited life. Each junction can withstand about 10,000 rewrites before these fail. Memroy cards these days employ 'leveling' schemes to level out the wear over the entire card, not just the front end of the card. This scheme has improved life by a goodly factor, but someday, a jucntion will eventually fail and that file will be damaged. If the damage occurs in the directory, the entire card may be lost. I am not privy to the internals of today's cards, but in the beginning, these cards had an internal, keep-alive battery that was good for about 10 years. I have been tussling with this storage problem and do not have a satisfactory solution for long term storage of sensitive documents. The best that I have at the moment is external hard drives and CDs and DVDs. Nothing yet matches the old time technology of well processed photos. For example, I have several dagurreotypes (tin types) from which I have made acceptable copies. These images were over 150 years old. I also have photos that are over 100 years old that have proven useful in my genealogical research. So far, digital storage can not match this record.

If the reason you're doing this is for enhanced aesthetics, and that's the only reason anyone chooses a slide in over a free standing, then you want to make sure that the decisions you make will actually look right. With laminate counters, unless you replace the counters entirely, it will not look right to have the attached backsplash for the counter and then have it interrupted for tiled section in the middle where the range is (without the laminate backsplash section). It will look like a mistake or afterthought. Considering that you're saying money is too tight to do a backsplash right now, much less a counter top, and that a slide in range costs about double what a free standing range costs, it really doesn't sound as though choosing a slide in would be in your best interests economically. Replace your current range with another free standing one if your range needs replacing due to functionality issues. If you have your heart set on a slide in, then pick up a "new to you" used freestanding one on Craigs List and save your money to be able to do a new range, countertop, and backsplash all at one time. That's the only way to integrate a slide in range successfully into an existing kitchen design.

Thanks for the info. Since I posted this I found the person who is working with me on my project. She works for a printer and converted about 60 slides for me. I think she charged me 100 dollars. I have a few hundred more that I want to do just for my own records and I'll look whether it's feasible for me to scan them. Did you find it hard to learn how to use the scanner?