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[zxsix]

My dad has a bunch of slides from about 30 years ago that he'd like to convert to .jpg photo files and then make VCD slideshows out of them.
Is there an at-home solution to do this?
Any tips or links to the required hardware?

[JimH]

You can do it with a scanner, but it needs to have a special attachment with a back light.

[GHammer]

Nikon makes a film and slide scanner. Does great work. Pricey, but if you have many it is excellent. You may be able to find a graphics co that would do them for you too.

[glynor]

I have a Nikon CS5000ed slide scanner with the 50-slide bulkloader at work.  It's "what to get" if you need to seriously scan slides.  Epson also makes a bunch of nice lower-end scanners with nice transparency features, but I can no longer deal with the plastic tray things for flatbeds.

I guess I'm just spoiled.   

The best place to start when looking around for somewhere to do it would be to look for graphics and printing service shops in the phone book (generally higher-end than kinkos).  The problem will be that they'll probably charge an arm and a leg to do it if there's more than just a few.

If you do get a scanner, for software I'd save yourself a bunch of headaches and just get VueScan for whatever scanner you get.  It works with just about every scanner out there and it's the best, easiest to use, application there is for that (don't even try to use the junk they give you with the scanners).  It also has great batch mode features that if you figure them out (and you can ask me how) can save hours of work if you do go the flatbed route.

[zxsix]

Thanks for the tip.
I also found this page which gives an idea of all the possibilities and quality samples of each for comparison.
http://www.andromeda.com/people/ddyer/photo/slide-transfer.html

[glynor]

I thought I'd mention this wonderful page... Scanning Tips by Wayne Fulton.  Really detailed and covers everything you could possibly need to know.  The "Evaluating Scanner Features" section is particularly nice to read before you try to buy a scanner (hint, generally DMAX means a lot more than resolution).