Client access to digital negatives is a hot topic in the photography business. Some photographers don’t give customers access to digital negatives at all. Clients of these businesses can only order prints through the photographer. Other photographers sell clients a copy of their digital negatives. This involves an extra charge on top of the price quoted for a photo session. A small minority of photography businesses (like Fine Photography) give clients high resolution digital negatives at no extra cost. But why does access to digital negatives matter? And what are the important things you should consider when thinking about this issue?
Advantages of having access to your digital negatives
1). Cost. The most obvious advantage is the cost saving. When you order prints through a photography business you generally pay a premium price for your prints. The photography business pays a laboratory to process your print order and they pass the printing costs on to you. They also charge you for the time they spend organizing your order. On top of that, there is also a mark-up on your prints. Photographers using this business model make a significant proportion of their income from print sales. You can save a lot of money by organizing your own print order. A word of caution, however. High resolution digital negatives are the only digital negatives of good enough quality to print from. If a photographer offers you low or medium resolution digital negatives, you'll be able to email those files, but you won't be able to get decent prints from them.
2). Convenience. Organizing your own print order can be more convenient. You can order your prints in your own time at the lab of your choice. You don’t have to work around someone else’s schedule.
3). Control. Access to your digital negatives gives you control over all aspects of the printing and post-production process. You can shop around for different quotes and make your own decisions about how you want to use your images.
4). Security. What happens if the person who photographs your wedding goes out of business? Or moves to a new location and you lose track of them? If you have a copy of the digital negatives, you can get new prints made for your 50th wedding anniversary if you want to. Access to the digital negatives provides real security over the long-term.
Disadvantages of having access to your negatives
1). Quality. Non-photographers get their prints made at retail outlets and the quality of prints produced by these labs is variable. Retail labs churn out high quantities of prints and their equipment is optimized to produce an acceptable quality across a variety of conditions. This is an averaging approach. Professional photographers use specialist labs where the quality control is higher. Specialist labs don’t have to process the high quantities of prints that retail labs deal with, so they can custom print each order, making sure that best quality prints are produced each time.
2). Convenience. Organizing a large print order can be quite a hassle. Photos may need to be resized and different labs have different formatting requirements. It can take hours to organize a large print order for printing. Some clients are very happy to pay someone else to do this job for them.
3). Responsibility. If a photographer gives you the digital negatives, then responsibility for the preservation of those negatives passes to you. Some people prefer not to be responsible for the preservation of their negatives.
Solution
Although people have different ideas about how this issue should be resolved, we recommend the following approach:
1). You should have access to your (high resolution) digital negatives. Without access to the digital negatives you are at the financial mercy of photographers, who can charge whatever they like for prints. There is no guarantee that today’s prices will be maintained over the long-term. The security issue is also important. Some photographers go out of business, move to new locations, and even change professions. If you don’t get the negatives now, you run the risk of losing access to the negatives completely in the future. Remember to make sure you receive high resolution digital negatives from your photographer. You can only print from high resolution digital negatives.
2). You should consider asking your photographer to get your prints made at the lab they use. At Fine Photography, we have no mark-up on client prints. We charge our clients only what the lab charges us plus the time it takes us to process the order. We make no profit on print orders. This is a good option because you get all the advantages of having your digital negatives without most of the disadvantages.
3). If you decide to get your own prints made, you should ask your photographer to recommend a lab. Photographers use labs all the time and we’re trained to evaluate quality. We can help you get the best result whatever your budget.
4). You should ask your photographer to keep a copy of your negatives in case yours are destroyed. At Fine Photography, we retain all negatives so that we can assist our clients if theirs are lost. We don’t guarantee the negatives, but we store them in multiple locations and make every effort to preserve them.
If you do get a copy of your digital negatives from your photographer, you might like to read our article, Preserving digital negatives, for information about safe storage and digital negative longevity.
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