How to make a library of my film with the Coolscan V?

I'm now using a Coolscan V ED to scan and archive my 35 mm slides/ negs. . In

an ideal world I'd like to have each photo saved onto a DVD in the highest

quality (Adobe RGB- 16 bit Tiff), for future applications.

 

The files will be very big however and scanning each will take a lot of time.

 

Is there an easier way to create high quality tifs for burning onto a dvd with

the Coolscan V?

I don't know of another way. I am doing the same thing using a Nikon 9000 and scanning both 35mm and medium format. Many of the images are snapshots, so I don't scan everything at maximum resolution. I output 16 bit TIFF files using Adobe RGB profile and after I complete adjustments in Photoshop CS2 I change the file to 8 bits for archiving. I use the batch scan capability in Nikon Scan 4.0.2 and have the scanner save the images to a folder for later processing in Photoshop. I have the images on several large hard drives and will later transfer to DVD or whatever the latest medium is at the time. I have multiple copies of every image in case of hard drive failure.

I say this with respect - archiving to digital media is backwards. Your film is already archival storage, although one can argue that certain color media is questionable, especially motion-picture duplicate negative film but nobody uses that for stills anymore. I hope.

 

Now with that said, I have my people do a lot of scanning slides in 'batch' using a slide stack feeder. The trick is to sort the slides into groups that have the same range of density, do one to be sure the outcome is acceptable, then run the stack automatically. For negatives it is more problematic if they are in strips unless they all have the same (or very similar) range. (Oh and the slide stack feeder is fussy about certain thick slide mounts.)

 

Regardless, honest, it seems that whenever a certain slide is needed it has to be rescanned to get it "just right" anyway.