I have been working with several ways to photograph and scan in
shells for a series of web sites.  So far the best way for scaning in photos
is a slide scanner. I forget the details because I didn't purchase it, but I
believe it was a Nikon Cool Scan. It was rather expensive (I don't know the
exact figures, if you really want to know, email me privately and I'll go
look it up) It scans slides at 450dpi, preview, edit the pic for color,
sharpness size etc and a full scan in under 1 min. I usually am on a Compaq
Laptop, but the scanning etc all takes place on a power mac. Because size
isn't a problem (the 450 dpi are saved as tiff files for specific use and
they are 7megs each or as jpegs which are about 2megs. )  I have done things
on a digital camera, but the quality really was craptastic and each
scan/picture took over 15 min to put in.  I will be beginning to photograph
shells with a regular 35mm camera and then scan the slides in when they are
all done.

On a side note, I will be signing off for about a week while my poor sick
laptop goes to the ICU unit at CompUSA. A friend will be getting my personal
mail for the time being, so if anything is a really important (yeah right
*grin*) you can still get me at this addie ([log in to unmask])  Have a good
week

Sarah Watson