Island Dan wrote:
>You'll find the Pro's that sell there Photo's blown up and
>sell for $600. $6000 still stick to FILM!
Yikes! I'm actually going to agree with Dan, here.
There are multiple levels of weddings. The "carriage trade" is
freqently done with cameras and lenses costing much more than
your new SUV. It isn't uncommon for these photographers to
shoot a number of pictures with 4x5.
Then you have the mid-level weddings. These are the ones where
they are spending $15-20,000 for the wedding. Expect about 10%
of the wedding cost to be spent on photography. These
photographers are starting to blend in digital, but still shoot
much of the wedding on medium format film. Hey, it's not only a
livlihood, but also a reputation to uphold.
The low-level weddings are the ones which have generally been
shot on 35mm, anyway. Maybe some medium format, but if so, it's
Mamiya 645 territory. Replacing 35mm with digital is very
logical and is usually a step up in quality.
Is digital cheeper than film for the average working
portrait/wedding pro? NO!
Why is that? Well, there is the equipment cost factor.
Depreciation, storage, editing (I NEED to keep upgrading
computers and software). This is an easy observation. Hey, the
average wedding/portrait photographer will use the same system
for over 15 years. Those Hassys have been depreciated off the
books for a zillion years and still make the owners a lot of
money.
The second factor which increases the costs is a major change in
working habits/styles. With film, we tend to let the labs take
care of the print making process. It's NOT MY JOB as the
photographer to worry about how to tweek the curves to get the
fucia dress to look fucia. I let the lab do that. My cost to
get a high-quality print done by hand is not that different than
a digital to FCA print. Instead of five seconds to write down
the frame number on my order form, I'm spending half-an-hour
editing the stinkin image. "Time-per-job" increases greatly
whenever we internalize processes instead of out-sourcing.
What's our time worth? Back-office time has to be calculated
into the equation.
AG-Schnozz
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