[trains are bad]

I was visiting friends this thanksgiving and one of them had a film 'scanner' that appeared to work not through a linear CCD scanning, but an image sensor that takes a 'picture' of the whole image instantly, an idea that I thought of some time ago and is past due. It was an inexpensive device costing about $100 and put out an 1800dpi jpg or tiff. I don't know how good quality is, but the speed and convenience were impressive. I have seen similar devices advertised in science magazines, but I remain skeptical as to their image quality. Plus, I doubt any of them work in linux. But I really could use a film scanner and I have an old digital camera...if I could think of a way to work the optics it almost seems like something you could make.