Having said that, I'm not sure what the issue is then? There is very little you can do with a RAW that you can't do with a JPEG. It might just take a bit more work.

You can make a JPEG from a RAW file, you can't do it the other way round.
Every time you make a change to a JPEG, you lose information.

---

Last edited by Damn Brit; 03-20-2010 at 04:44 PM.

[Wheatfield]

You can make a JPEG from a RAW file, you can't do it the other way round.
Every time you make a change to a JPEG, you lose information.

This is a bit of a red herring. You can open a jpeg and then never save it as a jpeg again, if you so desire.
With the most recent version of camera raw, you can open a jpeg with ACR and have access to many of the controls that are available to the raw shooter.
So, you only lose information on the first save and open, and this is likely to be of negligible importance unless the file is uber squished.
Unless I've missed something along the way....

[cwood]

This is a bit of a red herring. You can open a jpeg and then never save it as a jpeg again, if you so desire.
With the most recent version of camera raw, you can open a jpeg with ACR and have access to many of the controls that are available to the raw shooter.
So, you only lose information on the first save and open, and this is likely to be of negligible importance unless the file is uber squished.
Unless I've missed something along the way....

I suspect the point he was making that when you save a 12bit RAW file as an 8bit jpg you lose information that you can't gain back.

This is not something I usually care about because I use my RAW converter to "correct" any exposure issues. Once my exposure is nailed there is not much that a RAW file will do for me anymore.

[alohadave]

Look at it another way, if digital wasn't around, it would be like asking for the negatives.
No photographer is going to give them away.

It's not the sort of thing I would be asking the photographer before he takes the shots, it might piss him off. Asking afterwards would be too late.

Pay the photographer enough and they'll give you the RAW, just like with negatives. Granted, many photographers would price it so high that few would pay it.

If making a request for RAW files pisses off the photographer, then you need to find a different photographer. A simple yes or no is sufficient. If they are going to get pissed off at a request from a client, then what other problems are they going to have with the client?

This is a bit of a red herring. You can open a jpeg and then never save it as a jpeg again, if you so desire.
With the most recent version of camera raw, you can open a jpeg with ACR and have access to many of the controls that are available to the raw shooter.
So, you only lose information on the first save and open, and this is likely to be of negligible importance unless the file is uber squished.
Unless I've missed something along the way....

Agreed Bill but the way I look at it is, when you make changes in ACR to a RAW file, as opposed to a JPEG, you are making those changes to more information.
I'll admit, I'm new to shooting RAW so maybe I'm seeing those differences more because it's fresh to me.

Pay the photographer enough and they'll give you the RAW, just like with negatives. Granted, many photographers would price it so high that few would pay it.

If making a request for RAW files pisses off the photographer, then you need to find a different photographer. A simple yes or no is sufficient. If they are going to get pissed off at a request from a client, then what other problems are they going to have with the client?

Sure there are probably photographers out there who would take the money and hand over the files but I'm pretty sure they would be in the minority and hard to find.
A few responders in this thread have given reasons why RAW files wouldn't be handed over.
Personally, I would question a photographer's integrity and commitment in the circumstances being discussed in this thread. But that's just my opinion, a customer has every right to ask for whatever they want, it doesn't mean they are going to get it though and even if they do, it doesn't mean they'll be happy with what they get. A customer should be judging a photographers prior work before hiring them, the prior work they see will be processed images.