Many many years ago I decided the future would be digital, so spent "some" time scanning about 80.000 slides for myself and clients. I think at peak production I had 4 or 5 scanners running concurrently most of them (35 mm devices) working with batch attachments so could handle around 50 slides each. The large-format scanners worked with film strips or single sheets though. The output directed to a large-capacity NAS RAID5 system. I loaded the scanners and set them going, then sat in my den drinking coffee and batch-processing files over the network. Very tiresome, but necessary for my own part. Also paid good money for the work conducted on behalf of clients. I'm so pleased that period of my life is over with and will never do anything similar again.
And, yes, the reason for posting this: the 35mm scanners were Nikon 5000 units. Excellent film scanners. I purchased (very cheap) a stack of Thinkpad laptops from a bankrupt company and put firewire cards into them to match with the 5000 scanners. Got the scanners for a song too. I have kept one 5000 for the occasional helping out family or clients, and sold off the rest of them.
