[4ad]

> I work in the film industry, a 35mm full-aperture negative scan holds only about 2048x1556 pixels-worth

There are enough good 4k releases of classic movies to see this is not the case. You can compare the 4k and HD release (which is just under the resolution you provided).

I regularly scan Vision 3 film (movie stock) and Velvia 50 and Velvia 100 (E6). I scan it professionally at 10 Mpix, but when I have a good picture, I pay big bucks to have it drum scanned at 100 Mpix. Yes, it's not 100 Mpix, there's about 15-25 Mpix worth of detail there, but it's much, much more detail than the 10 Mpix scan.

[danwills]

Apologies it does sound[1] like an absolutely perfectly shot 35mm frame can theoretically hold up to 20 million pixels-worth, but I've never seen this in practice in the vfx industry, it's almost always less than the ~3 million pixels that 2048x1556 provides.

http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/pixels.html

[pwthornton]

Some of those classic movies were shot on 65mm and 70mm. Others may have simply been upscanned, which will yield a sharper looking image nonetheless.