How many MB of scanning do I need to print 16x16 photos from 120 film?

A lab near me uses an Imacon and he said that its 50 cents an MB and I would only need 8mb but thats way too small for print isn't it? Online site will do like 80mb for 10$ on a Nikon coolscan and 400mb on an actual drum scan for 30$ so in the end is 8mb enough? It would only be 4$… I really need the best from these films

I have no idea how many MB you need, that depends on the format. I can tell you how many MP you need.

for a high quality print, you need 300 ppi. For a 16x16, that comes out to 23MP. You can get away with a little less if needed.

Many factors can enter into a final MB size, one of the most important being how the file is saved. Most high end scans are saved as Tiff files, which of course are much larger in MB size than a Jpeg. You need to know if this lab is giving you an 8 MB scan in Jpeg as compared to the other higher MB scans which may be in Tiff. To print 16 x 16 at the typical 300 dpi, you are going to need a scan with pixel dimensions of 4800 x 4800. What the actual MB size will be is hard to say. The color depth (8 bits vs.16 bits) will have a drastic influence on this, of course, a b/w photo will be less. If done in Jpeg, the amount of compression will greatly affect the final MB size.

You might want to do this. Ask the lab that says you only need one of their 8 MB scans for your 16 x 16 print if they will GUARANTEE quality results from the print. If they will NOT give you an iron clad guarantee, then forget them and go somewhere else. 8MB does sound very low to me, no matter what they are doing.