Rich asks : : Wouldn't the real comparison be to include how much he spent on film : and processing in that time, as well as time spent going back and : forth to a lab and mileage and wear and tear on a vehicle? Film processing could be costed in at 200%+, that's what I always did on top of my fees and usage charges. Prints at 300% I never lost a cent on film or prints, they in fact made me money and the assistants always dropped the film in, and their fees were effectively paid by the customer - - I'd assume it'd be the same for anyone, so I never asked! Did other people actually carry the costs themselves? : And on : what, exactly, was he spending $10k per year on in digital gear? Camera bodies in ten years = 3 mechanical Digital Bodies in 3 years = 9 digitals + lenses + software updates + storage media + hard drives. er, going back a bit, I knew a guy who ran 3 Canon F1N's and people thought he was spectaculary excessive. He dropped $17,000 on his first canon digital and over $18,000 in computer paraphenalia to make it all go. This was way back of course. Not long later he put on TWO full time staff to work the images (I suppose he figured it cheaper than outsourcing film to labs) then he bought another DCS520. All up - lots of dollars.. : Lenses, printers, bodies, computers or what--and how much of that : gear would he have anyway if he was using film? upgrades to software = nada, 'upgrades' to new camera models to keep up with the Jones'- well Canon is running photographers hard, the new cameras are coming out at more than 1 a year now. I'd like to hear the : details. Oh, and does the figure for the decade of film cameras : include repairs and maintenance? 1 standy, two working, the few repairs apparently carried out under insurance. Me, I still use the F1N's and even though I do camera repairs, I never had to open one once! :) 1 went through a tornado too :) : It's really easy to toss out those numbers, but the devil is in the : details. It is. lets run through the printer we ran at college. I put $100 worth of chemistry in the RA4 which lasted roughly a month, running all day 5 days a week. the Epson wide format printer cost us between $200-$1800 a week in ink. average in heavy periods was around $1000 a *day* we had two of these - we actually had to shut one down to slow the load.. karl
