karl shah-jenner wrote:
James Schenken writes:
: In the literature that I read, most mid to high-end wedding photogs
: are now taking between 1500 and 2500 images at a wedding but only
: printing proofs for about 200 or so.
2500 images in RAW at say 10-20Mb per image = 25-50Gb
call it 25Gb. forget the adjusted images, 40 weddings to a terrabyte
add backups, 2 terrabytes of storage - and replace the drives every 5 years or less and we've got some serious costs for storage
Yes. But if I were a commercial wedding photographer, I would not be
keeping those images permanently online, either. Maybe 5 years, and
then offline storage for however long the DVDs lasted? Or something
like that.
: Assuming that't right, then that's 45 to 75 rolls of film at $5 per
: roll plus another $7 - $8 for processing.
: That makes ( for 60 rolls ) $720 cash out of pocket before getting
: paid for the pictures.
Did people really absorbe the costs of film where you are? No one here did that - the deposit at the time of booking covered film and processing, which was always loaded by a percentage (more profit for the photographer)
I do think a significant amount of the "digital angst" among some
professionals has to do with how they were hiding extra profits in
padded lab charges. Now, with digital, clients say "Oh, don't have to
pay those lab charges", and don't see why the professional service fees
should increase.
: The revenue for each is the same, the difference per wedding is $670
: and 10 weddings later, the digital photog just paid for his latest
: $5,000 Nikon or Canon and a swell additional lens.
Many here do not know how to cost time for manipulating images, so some of those shoot dollars get eaten in post production.
But also, if you're doing personal post-production, you should be
getting better results than machine prints from a pro lab, too. And
that should be a salable feature. (Or don't do individual adjustments,
just run through Bibble Pro with the "authenticlear" or whatever it's
called auto adjustment option checked.)
: That's why the wedding business is almost completely digital, the
: sports business is completely digital, and most other revenue
: producing photographic activity is or will be digital.
Here weddings shot on film command much higher prices, with demand for film increasing. People about to get married ask around and hear stories of lost CD's, failed CD's, photographers failing to keep *all the images* (understandably I might add! see above for amount of gobbled up hard drives) Given films long history and the fact that even the young 'uns getting married know of old albums and boxes of negs still hanging around the family somewhere, an increasing number see the long term storage benefits that go with film
I'm reasonably sure it's pure snob appeal, not any underlying
understanding, in most cases. But perhaps I'm a cynic about the wedding
market (not my professional field).
Personally I find those boxes of dusty old unlabeled prints (or, worse,
negatives) overwhelmingly depressing.
: For the large format landscape folks, take 12 exposures of a scene in
: sets of 4 overlapping and with one stop under, one right on, and one
: stop over and splice them together to make a 16bit dynamic range 50
: megapixel image that will be better than anything you can get
: directly from 4x5 and will challenge seriously up to 8x10.
: Quality, film prices, and processing costs will eventually drive the
: large format folks to digital as well.
Film:
The rule always was, a kit cost the same amount whether it be 35mm, MF or LF. A good body, a short, 'standard' and long lens, darkbag and appropriate film holders.
Huh? Never even vaguely true anytime during my phtographic life (since
1969 let's say). MF was tremendously more expensive than 35mm, which is
why I've never really gotten into it (had a Yashicamat 124G, had a
Fujica GS645, had a Norita Graflex that was given to me).
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
