RAW vs JPEG - Amateur vs Professional Commercial Photography Plus Official LinkedIn Feed Intro

I posted an Instagram Story this past Saturday showing (off) how we shot a Pre-Spring Collection in JPEG and how Instagram photographers are hatin' because of it.

Sure enough, someone (a friend, actually) thought it was a major flex.

And I intended it to sound like one so I could get ideas for a post of some sort. This is it.

Overly simplified background info:

RAW and JPEG are two of the common "file formats" used in photography. JPEG is the more universal one while RAW is somewhat more complicated though offers more latitude for adjustments using post-production (aka editing) software.

Back to the topic. A friend responded that my post was a major flex and I said that an even bigger flex would be me saying that what we did over the weekend was nothing because I once worked for a company that prohibited us from shooting in RAW even though we worked outdoors in a more challenging mixed lighting environment. She said that she had been told by photographer friends to shoot in RAW so she did.?For anyone to shoot in a format other than RAW is just whoa!

Now professionals shooting in JPEG is nothing new. The internet and social media have been preaching to always shoot in RAW for the longest time because the greater latitude in adjustments they offer far outweighs their larger file sizes. Since most people have been "learning" online, it seems outlandish to shoot in anything other than RAW because that's all they have ever read! If someone shoots in JPEG, then they're either doing it wrong or are cocky because they're way over themselves for saying their images don't require adjustments.

I started photography in 2008 (technically late '07). Digital was still new. The camera I started with was so "bad" that changing your exposure 2/3rds of a stop using post-production software will blow the brightest parts of the image even if the image was captured in RAW:

I was also a contract photographer for a couple of sports photography companies and we were all prohibited from shooting in RAW because there were a lot of us and they did not have the infrastructure to process probably tens of thousands of RAW files from all their photographers every weekend because the TAT (Turnaround Time) was so short. That said, we HAD TO shoot in JPEG and get the shots right IN CAMERA out of necessity.

Now since I know that I'm not the sun and that the whole world doesn't revolve around me, Reuters banned images submitted in RAW. Google, "Reuters raw jpeg" and see for yourself.?

I also once saw some photographers around La Iglesia de Nuestra Se?ora la Reina de los ángeles - an old Los Angeles church from the late 1700s - who would photograph churchgoers and sell them prints on the spot. They carried pocket-sized printers in their camera bag that would print images right after they were captured. I remembered talking to one of them because it was such a niche field and was told that they all shot in JPEG because it's the file format that can be ready by the printers they carried.

Wedding photographers who shoot in film are also shooting JPEG in a way because I highly doubt they go to the darkroom dodge and burn the negatives themselves the way they would process a RAW image.

The point is, it's not weird or flexy to shoot something in JPEG because people do it all the time. It just seems that way because those people tend to not be active online so there's not much pro-JPEG information out there.

I shoot in RAW all the time. I tell people to shoot in RAW if their camera has that option. However, this particular shoot required the use of JPEG for reasons that had nothing to do with the whole RAW vs JPEG debate!

Enter the world of commercial photography.

What I didn't post on IG was WHY we had to shoot in JPEG. I was overseeing a shoot and we were running late due to technical issues. We eventually got going but it wasn't until a few looks later that I noticed that the files that we were getting were actually in JPEG, not RAW (yes, I'm 101% sure the camera was set to capture in RAW before we started)! The client didn't have anything against the images that we had so far. I asked if she was okay with continuing as is because I was concerned about running into the same technical issues we had earlier if we changed something in the camera or tether software. I got a yes, so we continued the rest of the shoot in JPEG. We were in a studio where the lighting doesn't change (much) so there really weren't any adjustments needed. Why shoot in a file format that offers versatility in adjustments if there aren't any adjustments to be done anyway? Why disrupt the flow and risk running deeper into overtime just for the sake of changing into a file format with advantages that won't be needed (probably)??

Commercial photo shoots are productions. They're handled quite differently than retail/B2C photography and a lot differently than amateur photography. However, most photographers are amateurs (I don't mean that in a bad way). Those who are professionals practice mostly retail/B2C photography. Because of this, most of the information on the internet - the primary source of information for photographers is catered to the amateur or the B2C photographer.?

That is my aim here in my LinkedIn feed - to provide information that is highly specific to commercial photography. If that's what you're into, then follow along. Ask questions if something is unclear. I'm happy to help. If you're interested in quick tidbits, follow me @carloparducho on IG.?