Pro Photography Advice - serious.
 

My wife is an amateur photographer that takes pretty amazing photos "professionally" as part of our business. We charge people for time in the studio and send the photos to them by download link.

To date we have only ever sent the .jpegs to people. Should we be sending the raw image as well?

We have done perhaps 500+ shoots and never had anyone request RAW but I often wonder if people expect that from a professional.

The other thing is it's easy to take photos in jpeg and do nothing to them and send them in jpeg. With RAW they would need to be converted.

Also would you take in RAW amd convert to JPEG and send both formats?

If you use a pro wedding photographer as an example, when film was used they would only supply you with prints and keep the negs for possible future sales.

But when i used to shoot film for magazines i would always send them the transparency normally Ektachrome. But nowadays i send the raw files for the guys in the UK to manipulate.

I don't see the need to send retail customers who are not having the images used for commercial purposes the raw files :2 cents:

Most Pro cameras will shoot both Raw and jpg at the same time and save them to a card or direct to a laptop, so setting your camera up this way is always a good idea.

When i shoot in a studio which is about 80% of what i do i WIFI direct to my laptop which has way more storage than any card and i find it very quick even with a raw file size of 110MB from my Hasselblad X1D

Most photographers will sell you the raw images as well for an extra cost.

I turn in large JPGs and DNGs with all of the raw information in the file.

My JPGs with and SRGB color profile so its web friendly.

Then I give them DNG so if they want to take it to print they have the maximum colors to do so.

Now keep in mind JPG is 8 bit color.

Now the difference between 8 bit and 10 bit is roughly double the colors.

10 bit to 12 bit same; double the colors.

Now my camera shoots 14 bit and a lot of my clients decide months or a year later that they want a magazine add or poster; the the DNG file has it all. If it were JPG, they would defiantly be at a disadvantage when it comes to print.

Most importantly DNGs have all of the sliders and adjustments that you made during your post work all embedded in the file. double click that file: bam!! everything in that raw DNG file is already adjusted. My clients love that!

Hope that helps you out.

Ohh I have been doing and making a living at this for 15 years.

17 years here I send them JPGs to the size they ask for (I shoot jpg fine) :2 cents:

Who are your customers? Much of the general public might not even have software that can open a raw file, so that file would be worthless to them. Also, if you're doing the editing, only delivery of a jpg/tif/bmp type of final file shows the edits.

I've shot and sold photos to dozens of customers... only one of them ever even mentioned RAW files. It's probably not necessary unless they are using the pics professionally.

:cool-smil