Of memory, all scenes of TPM were analogically filmed with Arriflex lenses except for one scene shooted directly in HDCAM.
90% of the film was processed digitally, which leaves still 10% of “natural” scenes, but the entire film was processed through a Digital Intermediate at 2K (but Poita’s remark is quite relevant).
Eventually, there were 2 final masters : one Kodak 35mm and one TI at 1280x1024.The first LD/DVD/HDTV master was made from InterPositive ; the last BR master was made with a new scan directly from the 35mm master, fully scene by scene color-regraded.
On the other hand, AOTC and ROTS were digitally filmed with Sony cams at 2K.
I’ll try to find the exact information tonight.
I don’t know about the DI but TPM was shot on Arri 435ES and 535B cameras, the lenses were mostly Hawk anamorphics, shot at a 4.5 aperture when on set. Yet again, George wanted a soft look, like that on Star Wars where he shot often through nylon stocking (old school even at the time), so they shot a lot of TPM through a Tiffen ProMist soft filter, to try and achieve a similar look. They shot on Kodak 320T 5277, which is categorised as a low contrast stock, but it depends how you shoot it. Out in the desert they used EXR 5248, which is a slow stock, but light is rarely an issue outside in the desert sun.
Which scene was shot in HDCAM? That is really interesting.
So no matter what, the image is going to be a little soft, so scanning as high a resolution as we can will capture all that is there and any softness will be in the original, not as a result of the scanning.