Thanks everyone, unfortunately this project has taken a back seat as I have had one very ill dog for the last 3 weeks. However he is now well on the road to recovery and I have managed to borrow a Epson Perfection 1240U scanner so I am currently scanning transparencies - and I have to say if I never see anotherit will be too soon!! I am pretty impressed with the quality of the scans, Some need a fair bit of work but others are pretty good. Time is now of the essence as dads birthday is a week on Sunday. Any ideas of photobook producers that do express delivery?

Sorry to hear about Ben, but glad he is on the mend! Cant help you on the photo book subject! Hope it all goes well for your Dad 70th! see ya soon.

Sorry to hear about your dog, if they are ill you find it impossible to concentrate on anything else until they are out of danger. Glad you are now getting there and I am sure some of the book printers will do a quick turn around. I have an Epson 2450 and it does not make a bad job of slides.

If you see my post regarding printing images then I have to recommend Asda. http://www.yophotographer.com/page.php?t=8331 They do Photobooks and I can see little benefit in sending images away. You may need to prepare your images beforehand for the right ratios of side to length depending on the print size you are choosing, otherwise the Asda (and many others) will just blindly crop them to size.

Just as a side note, unlikely to be important in this instance, but dedicated slide scanners are better at scanning than flatbeds that have an adapter. As I said earlier, it is a long, laborious process and takes forever. I have had 3 scanners, intended to do all my slide collection from years back, but who the hell wants to spend hours and hours (and hours and hours) indoors when there are so many other things to do.