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the cost of digital, lets get this straight.....
Hello everyone, Experience aside, I think that anyone who approaches photography as a business and or art can agree digital is not as cheep as many often think. I have seen a lot of posts which have briefly mentioned the cost of digital but I wanted to start a thread specifically about this topic. Like many of photos on mm, I started with film and by no means was it cheep. much like film, digital puts a hole in your pocket. the difference is the money spent on digital is spent in bulk. what it cost me to get a professional working system was about 6,000 (- insurance) and by no means is it all pro rated gear. keep in mind, I am not talking about any lighting equipment, studio space, and marketing which can all add up, Iâm just talking about the price of digital. think about the computers, programs, hard drives, and lets not forget about the camera and gear! to stay in business you have to keep competitive and offer the newest technology (or at least something that not every idiot can do/afford) weather you are a great shooter or not.. So as you do a digital shoot you are spending money for each image. something to keep in mind... comments?? Aug 20 05 04:49 pm Link not to mention time spent in post processing that in film days were spent at the lab... we spend much more time with the images...that should count for something... Julia Aug 20 05 04:54 pm Link Don Brodie wrote: I can only speak from a professional persective. I don't buy cameras for play. When I was shooting film on assignment, I was either getting a lump sum for the job and film and processing expenses were included or I was billing per roll for film and processing. Either way I was paying the store and lab per roll. Aug 20 05 05:03 pm Link Yup - it's kind of an equipment treadmill now. It used to be you spent a bunch of money on a blad and a few lenses and you could use that forever. The only expenses after that were film and polaroid. Now, as you said, you have to keep up with the technology - bigger, better camera sensors, a new version of Photoshop every 12 days, another computer every 3 or 4 years. That's why - if you're working for a paying client - you should be charging a 'digital capture fee'. As a guideline, you should charge what you would have paid in film, polaroid and scans for that job. At first an uneducated client will think you're trying to scam them, but it's far from it. You're just trying to systematically recoup some of your 'digital overhead' - the money it's costing you to produce images more efficiently FOR THEM. If you don't charge for this, then moving to digital is actually costing you money. For example, if you had stayed with film, you'd still be charging for (and marking up) film and polaroid. Now that you're digital, you've lost the film markup and you're spending more money on the digital thing. It doesn't make financial sense. Aug 20 05 05:05 pm Link Juila makes a great point. When you send film to the lab you get a bill - and that is easy to mark up and charge to the client. With digital the tendency is to do it all in house 'just take a few moments to finish those images' and suddenly you've become myopic and have a severe case of RSI :-P Which is not so easy to charge for. Having said that, if you are a crap GWC it doesn't make the slightest difference how much you have spent on kit, or how much time you spend infront of a screen, you are still a crap GWC - and you don't get any sympathy for choosing an expensve hobby. Aug 20 05 05:06 pm Link everyone has had some good points to say... one of the most valued comments was from Dan Howell about how there is much more work expected from the photographer. Photoshop and I have a love hate relationship  .... my camera was bought at the beginning of this year (it was a 2nd hand model, something I recommend to beginners, not a bad investment at all...). It has already paid for its self! I will be upgrading to the current technology by years end only to have it become outdated in 6 months... yippee!! Aug 20 05 05:27 pm Link Like I've said before...we've come almost full circle. I started out with film. Spent a day shooting and the night in the darkroom. Then progressed to shooting and sending the film to my lab (yipee, time to myself)! Now, basically, back to hell...SAS...Shoot the day, And, Shop the night. I've broken my time down to an hourly rate just to get a handle on profit vs. loss, and I got to tell you, there really isn't that big a disparity in cost factors with all things considered! Aug 20 05 05:42 pm Link I think one thing that's being missed here is that there are still labs at which you can drop off (or to which you can upload) your digital files, and they will do the post work for you--your time can be your own again! Whether it's with film or digital, you will have to pay for post work in either time or money. I'd rather pay in time, and charge that time to the client. Aug 20 05 05:50 pm Link when i switched from film to digital back in 2001, i spend $20K on two D1x, cf cards, a fresh fast Mac, and other neccessary accersories. my lab bill. in 2002 (all digital), my lab bill was $60K less than it was in 2000 and i shot more events and more models it was like getting a $40K raise that year. of course i deserved that raise will all the extra time i had put in front of the computer. fast forward to 2005... i still spend about $10K per year upgrading camera's and such, and now with faster computers and a more efficient workflow... i spend a lot less time working on my files and can enjoy all the money i save. [ b ] e c k e r www.beckersblog.com www.beckerswebsite.com www.thebecker.com/flesh Aug 21 05 11:49 am Link Brian Diaz wrote: A lot of creative control and more importantly, privacy, is lost when "outsourcing" post-processing work. Hiring an outsider to do all that IMHO is not that different from having them take the pictures for you. Aug 21 05 12:56 pm Link I love the fact that I can keep all the work under my nose until it get's sent to the client. I charge a post production fee on every job that is comparable or less than what they used to pay for film, processing and scanning- everyone's happy. I know other photographers who do it as a capture fee, somewhere around $1-2 per usable image- Aug 21 05 01:28 pm Link I see the pros talking about all the extra time they spend in post proccessing the image with digital and it begs the question why? It seems to me that if you captured the image correctly in the first place you would not need extra time to correct. Am I missing something? Please explain why the extra time. Is it to be able to bump the price to the customer? Aug 21 05 01:31 pm Link troll? Aug 21 05 01:33 pm Link Mike Cummings wrote: it takes several hours to convert hundreds raw files to tiff and then burn the DVDs. Raw files ALWAYS have to be opened up and proofed even if you nailed every shot dead on. Aug 21 05 01:34 pm Link rp_photo wrote: well as work picks up, post processing is much more a waste of your time... I suggest finding someone to hire for your post process to work with on the regular. I still do a lot of my post stuff however the turn around is much slower and I lose a lot of sleep.... I would like to one day get someone to do it for me that I can trust to make the best out of my images. Aug 21 05 01:42 pm Link Mike Cummings wrote: Well, you basic premise is flawed unfortunately. That being your assumption that post is about correcting flaws. It isn't. (well maybe for some it is... Aug 21 05 01:45 pm Link piers wrote: What no answer? Aug 21 05 01:46 pm Link Justin N Lane wrote: That make sense... I did not even think about conversion time. Aug 21 05 01:47 pm Link John Allan wrote: You see some photographers saying it takes them 8 hours on one image. In my mind if you spend 8 hours fixing an image you need to reshoot. Aug 21 05 01:52 pm Link Don, I am not hijacking the thread. Post adds to cost so I want to know why so much post time. Aug 21 05 01:54 pm Link Mike Cummings wrote: In a word, yes. Aug 21 05 01:56 pm Link Mike Cummings wrote: I can't. I have no idea who would need/desire 8 hours of post for an image. Aug 21 05 01:57 pm Link Dan Howell wrote: I shoot mostly .jpg because I mainly post to the net or print for myself. I get very accurate color from my Fuji. I can not see shooting RAW in my situation because of the time factor and the .jpg gives me the same result in the end. Aug 21 05 02:03 pm Link John Allan wrote: Me either.. I get bent if it takes me more than 10 minutes to fix an image... and I am working with CorelDraw7 PhotoPaint and a very slow computer. Aug 21 05 02:06 pm Link Mike Cummings wrote: some folks want effects no matter how you feel. if the client wants a certain look, you got to supply. Aug 21 05 02:18 pm Link I also shoot a lot= alot to work on.... all of my photos are full framed, not cropped. in ps at minimum i clean up blemishes... that can take alot of time... Aug 21 05 02:20 pm Link Don Brodie wrote: I am more of a "real" shooter, as in you see what was really there. You see what I saw when I captured the shot. Aug 21 05 02:27 pm Link well this conversation aside, there is always someone who likes to voice the "natural" opinion. look in my images, the shot titled "classics" is an untouched images shot on 35mm and printed on fiber. it was scanned in to a computer for web use. I am more of a "photographer who knows what is appropriate for different assignments". not only do you see what I saw, you see what I feel. give me your e-mail and I will send you a un edited image and a edited image. you tell me what is "fixed" and what was the "added effect". Aug 21 05 02:44 pm Link Don Brodie wrote: I didn't want to say "natural" because a photograph is anything but. I can change the exposure, focus, etc and change what is captured. Aug 21 05 02:59 pm Link i am a clean photographer.... i got dial up as well. well i will submit to your test if you insist.. but this conversation ends here. and yea, i never used any filter to correct DOF ...Aug 21 05 03:04 pm Link Don Brodie wrote: I think you misread something... or I did. I thought you wanted to show me how much you can improve a good photograph in post. Aug 21 05 03:07 pm Link The cost for equipment is the cost for equipment. It makes no difference film vs digital. The difference comes with everything else required to produce the finished product. Five hundred images on film if you don't do your own processing is one hell of an expense compared to the expense of digital. You have to pay for all the good and the bad with film. Now I know none of the photographers on this site are shooting any bad images but in the real world I have found that any photographer that says "He doesn't shoot bad images", will lie about other things too. I also never factored my computer into my photography business because photography is only a portion of what my computer is used for. I would still have the latest and greatest in computer if I shot all film. There is a commercial on radio that sums up the difference between the cost of film vs digital. It goes,"It's the biggest no brainer in the history of mankind." Aug 21 05 03:17 pm Link Justin N Lane wrote: The process isn't *quite* that inefficient - if you know how to properly batch. Aug 21 05 04:12 pm Link William Kious wrote: Next time I have to do a large job, I'll use a stop watch. Running canon's batch conversion software alone took over an hour to convert everything to 16 bit tiff on a G5 dual. I spent around 1.5-2 hours checking over every image, tweaking individual settings as needed (they were mixed lighting industrial shots, not studio model work) and saving the settings before hitting batch convert. After that it took approximately 20+/- minutes to burn each DVD times 7... Aug 21 05 04:54 pm Link I'm a Nikon user and now that they finally got on the RAW+JPG band wagon all those hours of batch processing are over. When I shoot a job that needs large files I will use the RAW+JPG setting. After the shoot I'll edit and preview the JPG's for client selection and when they choose the files they need I will then go to the raw files for processing and converting. Aug 21 05 05:30 pm Link |
