Digital Negatives...

how do you define digital negatives? back in film days, you had actual films to hold on to. but with digital films.. would the original raw file or the final PP high resolution images be considered as digital negatives?

what's your take?

thanks and happy new year to all~~

Why do you feel the need to define them?

For me I have digital negatives which are mine (RAW), and the "digital negatives" I sell to customers, which are JPGs that i've fixed in RAW (exposure/white ballance) but have no other processing done on them.

EOS mE wrote in post #2458343
how do you define digital negatives? back in film days, you had actual films to hold on to. but with digital films.. would the original raw file or the final PP high resolution images be considered as digital negatives?

what's your take?

thanks and happy new year to all~~

I save both a copy of the original and PP file if possible . I then save one copy online and one copy to dvd.

tim wrote in post #2458355
Why do you feel the need to define them?

For me I have digital negatives which are mine (RAW), and the "digital negatives" I sell to customers, which are JPGs that i've fixed in RAW (exposure/white ballance) but have no other processing done on them.

Tim, yeah I had always thought the RAW files were my negatives. I'm shooting for a friend this saturday, my second wedding and the B&G may ask for the originals, since I'm shooting it free.

Just want to make sure if they ask for my RAW files, I can just tell them that's where the free part stops. cuz some ppl think free should mean everything from you is free... which is where i draw the line.

thanks tim!

Give them JPGs, almost no-one can process RAW files anyway.

thank Tim, I plan on giving them JPEG and a contract, even though it's free photos.

Give them 75 DPI JPEGs

neil_r wrote in post #2458477
Give them 75 DPI JPEGs

can't do that man.. this is kinda like an investment for future references.. haha

I don't shoot anything for anyone without a contract, even if it's for free.

dpi is irrelvant for digital, ppi is what's more important but still mostly irrelevant. Give them a 3000px wide image that's 1dpi it'll print fine

To me if I've shot in RAW,those are the negatives. If I shot in JPEG, the non-edited are the negs.

If a customer asks for the digital negs I will present him with edited JPEGs. To non-photographers they only see JPEGs they can print from as negs. As I know he'll print from the files I won't give out anything that hasn't gone through at least basic editing.

CR2/CRW files are unreadable on most computers, so I'd see a JPG or Tiff file as a negative.

Medium fine JPG's are what I give, unless otherwise contracted. Most people do not do more than 8x10, so medium will work fine. This also make all the pictures fit on one CD, usually.

Now that I have a 5D, I can get away with small fine (4mp).

nice.. great input guys and gals. thanks for the heads up.

I was just recently introduced to the DNG format which is defined by Adobe as the new, up and comer method for preserving digital files. They are essentially RAW, but in format recognized by Adobe and many others that get on the bus. There are already some cameras that output DNG's natively instead of something proprietary like CR2. Hasselblad, Leica, Ricoh, Samsung and Pentax are what came up on my search. I've been told Son'y Alpha does as well.

The whole idea is that in XX years, will your grandkids photo software read CR2?

Do you set this on the camera before you shoot or is there a way to save it as medium, small etc?

Do most of you resize the image to 300 dpi and make it 8x12 or do you just leave it original. (eg. 40 x 60 72dpi) Sorry if this is a basic question but I'm not sure how everyone else handles it.