I suggest two saucers. One with an equal mixture of flour and concrete powder; add a little flavouring like onion powder if you like. The other should be nearby with some fresh water. Hopefully this wouldn't appeal to dogs, cats and children that might be wandering around...

In 1999 I bought a Hewlett-Packard PhotoSmart PhotoScanner, which could scan slides and negatives. Results were generally pretty good, especially for landscapes and the like, but contrasty slides gave it trouble. I had a slide of my niece taken in late afternoon in the front garden, and when scanned, it looked like she was spotlit in the middle of the night.

That HP scanner, the best I could afford at the time, had a Dynamic Range (DR) of 3. DR is like contrast; the higher the DR, the more detail the scan will show in highlights AND in shadows. Apparently it's a logarithmic scale, so a DR of 3.2 or 3.3 is much better than 3.0. Some transparency scanners offer a DR of 4.0 or greater, so other things being equal, look for those models.

You should have great results with a good Nikon, or something like the Minolta DImage Scan Dual IV (the latter should be less than US$500).