"Is digital cheeper than film for the average working portrait/wedding pro?
NO!"
The sadder-but-wiser pro often finds this the case. "But you're not paying
for film and processing, the salesman said..."
"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."
This is the case with a great number of things in our society today. What
was often a long term investment is now often a disposable item. did you
know that there is no way to repair an out of warranty Sony monitor, he says
bitterly? Now remember, that's a product that is a simpler version of a
television set, changed little since the introduction of the integrated
circuit. It may be crap, but that's the way things are going. In your
business model, this must be considered.
"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."
Will the day come when we can get a digital image ready to print in a couple
of minutes, every time? Sure. But that day isn't today. And remember, the
kind of print from film is called a machine print. That 11x 14 or 16x20 is
made by hand, and takes a lot more time. For many wedding and protrait pros,
this isn't a problem, as they do have the first part of the week free from
everything but meeting customers, but it is something that they didn't do
before.
I don't hate digital, I hate the way it's being sold.
Bill Pearce
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