“Then and now”?

The JPEG format is a lossy compressed file format. It can be saved at different levels of quality / compression.

PSD and TIFF are lossless, uncompressed formats.

“Best” is probably a Mac Studio with two 27" displays. Or three.

A MacBook Pro would do the job, as well. Though I don’t see how people can work on such a tiny display.

Question for you: did this come up before the shoot? Did you sign a contract? Was it mentioned at all that you’d get 15 photos for your $1800 price?

I’ve been thinking about it for about two years now. Maybe I should look for some Black Friday deals.

Smugmug and mpix.com come to mind.

The former if you want to have a virtual store; the latter if you want to bulk order and send to yourself.

IMHO, convenience is the biggest factor.

Want to make a print during a party, to give to your guests? Want to make multiple variations of a print to get it exactly right? Want to make a birthday card the morning before you have to go to a birthday party?

Also, at least for me, having my own printer means I make more prints. My (Epson R3000) actually died two years ago, and I haven’t really made any prints since.

Also I don’t think anyone has mentioned lighting. You can use one or more lights with colored gels to get various effects. Smear a little vaseline on your lens filter to het the glow.

Pro wildlife photographers will spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a faster lens.

I bought one during COVID and used it in my backyard. I didn’t use it in snowy weather.

Joby gorillapods made these popular.

You’ll have more anxiety from worrying about it than from any actual problem.

we agreed that i would come back this year and take photos of events for the yearbook

Sounds to me you made an oral contract to provide images for the yearbook. Yes?

So why should they not use the images?

How slow? you can use a very slow shutter speed to create some interesting effects. It’s called “dragging the shutter”.

Otherwise I’d stick with somewhere between 1/60 and whatever your sync speed is (probably 1/200?).