Love my Canon 9000f, in addition to slides, also handles 35mm negatives still on strips. Only complaint I have is that it will not handle other negative sizes. I have a bunch of larger format negatives I would like to scan.
John, I have scanned 2 1/4 X 3 1/4" negs on my 9000. I just got it back from a friend who used it to scan 2 1/4 square negs with good results. I guess if you have 4 X 5 or larger, it won't handle them.
I just noticed this thread! I have a Canon Canoscan 8800F and I bought it after looking around and comparing reviews and prices. This one was the best compromise for cost, quality, and a reputable name to back it. A real photographic scanner that gives almost perfect quality would have been out of my price range, and the low-cost ones had terrible reviews. This one is good enough for me; it's about the size of a '67 Buick, but performs well. I got the 8800F so I could scan my Dad's massive collection of over 5300 slides (including some railfan pics) and hundreds of negatives after he passed away nine years ago. Having that professionally scanned would have been prohibitively expensive. It took me several months to get through the lot, and the quality is similar to that of my DSLR (Pentax K100D). That big Canon has given me good service.
I really like my (ancient) Nikon CoolScan LS-2000. It scans both negs and slides. It was a very reasonable price, used, at about the time computers changed from SCSI cables to USB. It's a SCSI. Because of it, I kept my (ancient) Apple PowerPC Mac to operate it. I've also just received a free Canon CanoScan 9900F (has a backlight) from work. It worked great using ScanGear up until my MacPro there was upgraded a few years ago and they couldn't communicate. Unfortunately, I can't locate the right software to operate it on my home MacPro (OS 10.6.8). The closest thing I could find online was Mac_ScanGear_V250_00 but it won't work. Someday I'll have to join the 21st century and get the latest and greatest. So, anyway, I'd recommend buying a used CoolScan from a reputable dealer.
I'm like Mike VE2TRV in that I too have thousands of family slides to scan, as well as my rail slides and will not pay the price for commercial scanning nor bear the risk of losing them in transit. The Epson V800 @ $675 scans 12 Slides/Scan in comparison to the $200 Epson V600 and $200 Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II which scan 4 Slides/Scan. I'm dragging my heels, grimacing at the V800's price tag while trying to decide if the higher scan production of the V800 would be worth it. If I bought the V800, I could then later sell it on eBay. They've recently sold used for $350 to $400 which would lessen the financial pain.
