How can I easily scan 1000+ photos?

You might well be high, I can't speak to that. But there is a method to 'easily' scan a rather large batch of photos with relative ease. Nikon's Coolscan 5000 has adapters that let it bulk scan 50 slides, or a whole roll of uncut negatives. As far as I know, and I've not tested this, as my Coolscan isn't capable of working with these attachments, one simply loads the scanner, sets some initial options, and walks away for a few hours. That should get you started, anyway, although it's a rather pricy option, at about $1500 total.

Scanning is a slow PITA. For 35mm slides a stack loader on a Nikon LS-2000, 4000ED or 5000ED is perhaps the least offensive.

I use an 8000ED which takes no stack loader, so I document 35mm and medium format film by shooting macro pix (Nikon 105mm macro lens) of the film. It is very fast and gets the pix into the database. Only if a pic gets used (ad or print) do I go through the tedious scanning process. The macro pix are usually even good enough for the web.

-Allen Wicks

Rather than buying a scanner, you might consider a scanning service. This place

http://www.scancafe.com/

gets good reviews, for example from Popular Photography magazine. $0.19/scan at 3000dpi using Nikon scanners.

I'm in the midst of scanning several thousand 4x6 photo prints into my Aperture library, and I'm using a (2005?) Fujitsu 4100 series scanner on a windows machine with MS scanner wizard. The scanner can take 35-40 prints and scan all at 300 dpi in around 3 minutes. It's perfect for me, other than having to transfer the files to the Mac (ok to have 2nd copy on windows machine, though). You might try the Fujitsu S510M (for Mac).

I also use the Nikon 5000 with bulk slide feeder direct to the Mac - that takes about 30-40 minutes for a roll of 36 at 2000 dpi, and jams frustratingly often - sometimes twice per roll. Great scans, though! Using it also for best negatives from the print photos.

twn2 wrote:
I'm not looking for 300dpi, 150 or 72 is fine.

Tom-

Scanning is a slow PITA process regardless of 300 ppi or 72 ppi in the final files. I would suggest that as long as one is going to the trouble of scanning it makes sense to create print quality files, which means 300 ppi.

The only down side of 300 ppi is larger file size, and hard drive capacity is now cheap.

-Allen Wicks