OT The CDs that the film processors give you.

Question

I was thinking about dusting off the old 35mm film SLR and shooting a roll or two of film. There are some things I miss about the old days. In any case I am not sure what resolutions that the developers burn to your CD for each picture. If I remember correctly they give a med and high res jpg but I do not recall the specs. Are there places that will allow one to specify the size?
Which leads to a more general question- what is the highest (meaningful) resolution that one can expect to obtain when taking this route?
Thanks,
Don

Answer 1

Hi Don,
Those CDs you got from the film processors were pretty low resolution. The
Kokak Picture CD gave you jpgs at only one resolution (1024 x 1536 1.5MP).
I think this, or the equivalent, is still available and is what you'll
probably get at your local processor. But, you'll need to check.
The earlier Kodak Photo CD was better. It used a proprietary file format
but gave you something like 5 resolutions per image with 2048 x 3072 being
the highest. They had a separate Photo CD PRO product also that went up to
4096 x 6144. But, Photo CD is gone. Kodak stopped making the equipment
and disks and discontinued the service in 2004.
Given the current state of digital cameras and the availability of low cost
scanners which can do a decent job scanning film, this has to be a declining
niche market. I believe there are still some labs that will produce a CD of
high res scans for you, but I haven't keep up and can't refer you to one.
Maybe someone that still shoots film and doesn't have a scanner can comment.