What if we got our hands on a 70mm blow up wouldn’t that have preserved far more detail ? Thus warranting a 6.5k or 8k scan.
A 70mm blow up print does typically have slightly more detail than a 35mm print, even though they’re both based on a 35mm negative, due to the quirks of optical duplication. But it would still not have enough fine detail to justify anything above a 4K scan, because optical duplication, even for blow-ups, loses a shocking amount of fine detail with every step. The three Star Wars 70mm blow ups I’ve seen confirm this.
The root problem remains the same: a pristine, 35mm negative of modern high-quality filmstock could be worth a 6k scan, but we don’t have anything near that. We already have access to extremely high-quality prints, we already have access to 70mm blow-ups. They just aren’t worth it, because even the best prints aren’t anywhere near the quality of a negative. Re-scanning prints with a better scanner, or with a multi-pass HDR scan at 4K would yield far more usable results than a >4K scan.
Thats surprising I would assume a 70mm blow up would be much closer to the negatives in detail. Wouldn’t it technically still be best to scan at 6 or 8k because when viewing on an 8k tv you would see more of the natural grain rather then the 4k pixel structure. even though there may be little to no more perceptible detail.