Photo quality - onto paper or onto CD?

I am about to buy a colour aerial photo of a sixty square mile area.
The firm supplying these charges more for the image on CD than it does
for a printed photograph. Don't ask me why, I've queried it and the
differential is vast. Obviously I am considering buying the printed
version, scanning it and saving it to CD for future
ehancement/enlargement. Will I lose any quality with this conversion?
I have a SCSI scanner and Photoshop so I am confident I could get
about 1440 dpi.
Would I be better off buying a negative and getting a professional to
digitize it?

 

What are the various technical parameters regarding the print and the CD image?
(Size, pixels x,y)

Do they say what size the negative(positive) is that covers that area?

Most prints yield about 400 dpi at best. (B&W aerial photography done on high
end cameras and repro equipment might go to 600 or so). So the larger the print
they sell, the better.

I'm curious: What is your use of the image going to be?

Cheers,
Alan

 

Its simple as to why they charge more for the CD than the print - on the CD
you have a perfect copy of the image that you can make prints from (I assume
that the CD includes a licence to do that). On the print, you have bought a
print, and I presume NO LICENCE to reproduce the image - ie, by you scanning
and reprinting the image, you are breaching copyright. (* all legal
disclaimers apply)

If you were to by the negative, I guess that the price would be higher than
the CD alone.

 

I believe you pay more for the "negative" because you are getting the source and
can make as many prints as you like. Most film photographers charge extra to
supply the film.

 

prints are analog, cds are digital. anytime you convert from one to the
other, you lose information no matter how costly your equipment.