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the camera doesnt matter. are your skills any good?
I good photographer with a shitty lens will not make a good commercial product lol come on guys.
“A poor workman blames his tools”
sure, but if I want the color sensitivity data for the photosites you either need a camera with that information already known or to measure it yourself.
Not in a technical field. You shoot with a Barbie camera and I’ll use a hasselblad. Which will be better? “The best camera is the one you have” is bullshit.
What do you think photoshop is for?
Only 5k? Sound like a hobby, because most professional photographers have a body that is already 5k by itself, plus several lenses ranging between 2 and 20k. I mean, I’m a hobby photographer and my gear already exceeds at least 8k. So stop bitching Karen.
All of your silly little lives are hobbies. Peasants… fuck your wedding hahahaha. Stupid idiots don’t get it. You eventually will. I Quit… Here’s Why the Technician Shortage Is Getting Worse
Nobody is going to watch your youtube video, just type the relevant info.
Thats nearly as obnoxious as dumping AI slop into a discussion.
If my photographer can get me the picture I need with the $300 camera, I’m hiring them first. Not everyone needs their pictures on a billboard or TV ad.
Pppffffssshhhh… 5k?!?that is hobby level money. I’m over 15k into just my lenses and I do this as a hobby and shoot friends and family for free.
Bro… Shooting your friends and family is messed up… Whether someone pays you to or not…
I kill people for money… But you are my friend… So I will kill you for free
Post a photo so we know you’re legit
We demand man ass
Looks like a Canon?
Canon RF lenses are outrageously priced, even amongst other outrageous ILC brands, because they lock out third parties. So yeah, this lady got ripped off.
Ehh, They’re more expensive, but most of them come with IS.
I’d still rather shoot Nikon.
It’s not the IS that makes them expensive, it’s the locked out ecosystem and the monopoly they have. I’m not saying they’re not good - they are (from what I’ve seen), but healthy competition, if it existed, would’ve driven the prices down a bit.
As for IS itself, since the move to IBIS, it makes sense that some lenses drop the IS and only rely on the body’s. IMO it used to matter in the DSLR days when IBIS was not really a thing. Nowadays it’s sensible to only put it into the longer lenses that physically need it (the longer the lens, the more physical movement required to compensate and so on).
The APS-C lenses are awful. And the FF ones with IS, especially the zooms, have outrageous barrel distortion that crops the sensor a ton… on $2K lenses.
This is the brand new 20-50mm F/4 for instance, and its not even the worst offender. It’s $1400:
The Thypoch 24-50 2.8, for comparison, which is like 1/3 the price on Sony E. This is $650, often less on sale:
I’m speaking as someone who mistakenly bought into Canon APS-C. I loathe it, as a hobbyist with a Canon SLR for years.
I’m selling out, as soon as I see with what Fuji/Panasonic/Sony cook up within the year.
Yes, rf did take a nosedive
How great that there is still EF. I just got myself an r10 since Sony dosent currently have a current aps-c (want that because I throw up from the laggy ones like the 6400 had when I tried it) for around the 600-800€ range.
Also with tamron and others canon also confirmed that they are already licensing third parties.
But if you look at half recent ones like the Canon 70-300 is II USM or even a canon 18-55 is II (or Tamron 17-70 f/2.8, which I currently run, they’re perfectly OK for what I’m using them for at least.
Photography has gotten out of control, my wife just got charged $1,500 for a house shoot and video for a real estate listing, same person charged less then a 1k a few months ago
Next time, see what a local camera shop would charge to rent some equipment so you can do the shoot yourself. It’ll probably be less than $75 to rent the gear for a day. It takes a lot of experience to be a good photographer, so you’re paying for their time and expertise, not their equipment. Modern cameras do a lot of the work for you, so you might be happy doing it yourself. On the other hand, for something like a wedding I would hire a pro if there’s room in the budget.
What do you mean charged? You negotiate rate beforehand. No one wants to shoot your real estate shit, so you pay more. If it’s too high, hire someone that has no experience that won’t survive on their rates. Good lord, people.
Why doesn’t your wife learn how to do it, then?
A pro is not a hobbyist. That make all the difference. It take years to handle photography
The difference between a pro and a hobbyist is the money, not the experience.
Nonsense. Of course you have more experience when it’s your full-time job. If not, you’re just bad. Only a few hobbyists will have your level of knowledge and mastery. And everything is not about the money.
When you’re doing higher end listings it’s frowned upon, makes you seem cheap.
Then it sounds like the $1,500 is justified as your wife isn’t being cheap.
Lemmy: don’t use AI; pay artists!
Also Lemmy: this uppity bitch should work for exposure.I think it’s more about the gatekeeping.
I wouldn’t call his reply gatekeeping. He’s kind of just promoting a race to the bottom mentality.
Uber: know how to drive, own a car, insurance, use a cell phone to tell you where to make $12, drive from A-B-C-A, and pay 9 of it back to car maintenance over time.
Photographer: Own camera, insurance, lights, lenses, backdrops, computer, software licenses, photodelivery platform costs, know how to use them. Pack up gear into car, drive to shoot, lug all the gear, setup, shoot, position, pose, pack up all the gear, drive back, stow all the gear, transfer images to computer, Lightroom, cull, Photoshop, color/image/wrinkles/clothing fixes, blinks, smirks, stray hairs, put it into a gallery,
The Uber driver spent 30 minutes
The photographer spent 6-8 hours.
If the photographer is gatekeeping you, hire the Uber driver to take your picture for $12.
Just because it’s not an exact comparison doesn’t mean the analogy fails.
Edit: I think there is confusion based on her word choices. I mention it in another comment.
You can have all the hobbies you want. But undercharging for hobby work does fuck over the actual photographers.
Everyone is looking for an amazing hobbiest to shoot their wedding and beating the fuck out of the professionals doing it for a living because they want a couple of grand for a solid week of work.
Seriously, just ask the people attending the wedding to send pictures to you, people would love to help.
My wife has been doing professional work for years, over the past decade or so, drastically more clients browbeat her mercilessly to the point that she has to fire them. What do you mean you need $200 to come to my house and do headshots, it’s only worth $25.
If you have offers for $25 you should take them. Her stuff is really good, they know they don’t want the $25 they’re just not willing to pay a living wage to get it.
I think the bigger issue causing that is cameras on phones have devalued photographs in general. Many people really don’t understand what goes into the good photographs and think it’s as easy as their selfies. And it’s bullshit that people treat your wife that way.
Many people really don’t understand what goes into the good photographs
most people have no idea what good photograph is. they share blurry shit with terrible composition on instagram and think that is good photograph, because their 10 friends told them so (and they returned the favor and everyone is happy how amazing photographers they all are)
I don’t see what’s wrong with $100-300 I know about five 30 year old women with $5,000 cameras that would jump at the gig as long as it wasn’t a full wedding commitment.
A car is needed for all in the USA. A Camera is not. The uber driver has two jobs while the photographer also has two jobs. My mind is blown. Couples please share your shots so I can take dumps. Maybe you like dumps. It is what it is. Enjoy your slop you little piggies.
My house cost 300 grand and you want me to look after your kids for 60 quid a day?
Nobody cares what your camera costs, Nat. You can still take shitty pictures with a $5000 camera. Charge what you think your service is worth and work for clients who pay it.
$5k is also literally hobby money. I’ve spent way more than that snowboarding and hiking over the years. My lab setup at work is literally worth more than I will make in my entire career. Sit down bitch.
Wedding photographer is an interesting job. With a lot of jobs, people buy the minimum viable equipment they need to get the job done.
But, people who get into wedding photography seem to generally be people who are really into photography. Rather than a $5000 camera being the requirement for the job. The $5000 camera is a present you can justify getting yourself if the wedding photography game is going well.
It’s not a tool that goes into the case and stays there until the next wedding. It’s something to be used for the kinds of pictures that don’t pay the bills but that you love taking: nature shots, architecture, abstract art, gritty realism, etc.
Nobody cares what your camera costs
It’s certainly a curiosity. Like, what’s the value-add of a $5k camera relative to a cheaper model? What’s the step-up or step-down in price? What features are you prizing? What brand are you favoring? What are your clients looking for that someone else can’t necessarily bring with a cheaper device?
Whole books have been written about the industry, the technology around the industry, and the kinds of people who pursue it.
Charge what you think your service is worth and work for clients who pay it.
Finding clients who pay well is half the work of any freelance job.
On the flip side, Uber is basically a hobby. Do these people buy their cars just to drive for Uber, or do they drive for Uber to make some extra cash with the car they already have/need?
The math has been done and the wear on your car isn’t worth the pay, either, so it’s a net loss that desperate people are using in an economy where jobs are harder to come by. So uber is taking advantage of people and subsidizing their wages by taking advantage of the impoverished, similar to how the biggest company with the most people on welfare is Walmart. It’s not a hobby, it’s a blight on our society because rich people created a broken system that they then use to further increase profits.
No one decides uber is a fun hobby, if someone says they do it for fun, they’re lying or insane, I’ve done uber, it’s dangerous and a third of the riders are drunk and scary as shit. I’m a big dude, but crazy and drunk is unpredictable, and vomit is impossible to get out of your carpet.
I’ve met too many people who think the number they associate to a thing somehow makes them a better user of it.
Tons of people take amazing photos with tons of thought and skill involved in composition and everything, with a phone camera or shitty digital from 2010.
People who use the price of the equipment to justify expense instead of the quality of their work are usually bad at whatever it is they’re charging for.
You can shift the quality a lot with great equipment, but that requires you to know what you’re doing first. And it still depends on what you’re trying to shoot. Somebody trying to capture a great moment in high speed sports might need a better camera than a cat dad. But without knowing how to use it, it is worth nothing.
All the money in the world can’t buy talent
All the talent in the world can’t perform brain surgery with a chainsaw
OH YEAH?!
I’m stealing this 😂
At $100 per shoot she can pay off her camera in one year doing one shoot a week. That’s if it’s a hobby.
But since it’s not a hobby for her, as she points out, that means she can do 3-5 shoots per week. If she charges $300 per shoot, and averages let’s say 4 shoots per week, that’s over $60k per year. A small salary, but people get by for less.
If she wants to make more, that’s fine. But she has to convince people that she’s worth a higher price by doing quality work and demonstrating consistency, professionalism, building a network of returning clients and recommendations if she wants to be fully booked each week. Not by telling them how expensive her equipment is…
Just playing devils advocate here, there should be more involved than simply taking pictures. There will be editing, and putting together an album that makes sense to the customer as well; therefore she could charge more for her time and upcharge for album features such as hard copy decorative stuff.
Then again, there is that saying “starving artist” and all…
Sure, but I factored that in by considering 5 shoots per week “fully booked.” That gives you an average of 8 hours per shoot for everything from transport, set up, shooting, take-down, editing, archiving, billing, etc.
Not unreasonable, especially considering that’s a 40 hour week. Overtime exists if she needs longer, and should be billed accordingly. $1500 in one week is more than a lot of people make, even working over 40 hours.
Is the $100-$300 she mentions a flat rate or an hourly rate? Even as a flat rate that would be decent for one day’s work. If it’s hourly, that’s pretty lucrative and leaves no room to complain, especially not about all the extra stuff that’s involved.
Physical copies would of course be charged a la carte or as a bundle or whatever; it’s pretty standard for those to be add-on costs, unless a certain number of items were already part of the negotiated contract. But with print-on-demand services these days, that adds very little additional work or overhead expense for the photographer.
But yeah if she wants to charge more than $300 for one shoot, then she needs to spend time building her reputation, not complaining about the cost of her equipment and acting like her cheapskate customers are to blame.
You can build a reputation with a $400 mirrorless camera, if you’re a good photographer. Then invest in professional equipment when you can afford it.
At $100 per shoot she can pay off her camera in one year doing one shoot a week.
Assuming you don’t value your time, sure. Pro-photographers charge a lot more than that. Also, who wants to give up a year’s worth of weekends for a fancy camera?
and if you do not pay taxes, and do account for software licenses, work going into post processing, and general admin work for your business as a start.
Let’s look at the rest of that paragraph you selectively quoted:
At $100 per shoot she can pay off her camera in one year doing one shoot a week. That’s if it’s a hobby.
[emphasis added]
What a bad faith attempt to stir shit up over nothing.
???
Get some thicker skin, my guy. If you’re getting paid for the work, its going to be more than a hobby. Especially if you’re planning to work 50 separate gigs.
Ffs, if you can file taxes as a business, we’re well past the point of hobbying. That’s just a part time job
This isn’t about having thin skin, this is about you being unnecessarily combative. Don’t flatter yourself thinking I’m torn up about it.
If you’re getting paid for the work, its going to be more than a hobby. Especially if you’re planning to work 50 separate gigs.
Ffs, if you can file taxes as a business, we’re well past the point of hobbying. That’s just a part time job
Hence where the rest of my original comment comes in. I know you like cherrypicking excerpts devoid of context, but ffs everyone can see my whole fucking comment. It’s right there. And you’re acting like you’re actually making a point here? Go away.
And even if your pictures were good, more than 100$ per photo is overpriced asf, and with that you can recover your inversion and gain more.
Exactly.
There is real skill involved in photography, and it takes real time even after being skilled. A 1-hour shoot in a new location still requires probably an hour of planning, maybe an hour or two of logistics, and maybe 2-3 hours of work after the fact to get the photos processed and distributed. And it’s basically the opportunity cost that will eat up the entire day, because you can’t double book the same sunset or other lighting conditions or whatever. There’s seasonality, too, if you want specific seasonal conditions in the shot, if you want to book the Saturday that other clients want, etc.
That’s before expenses like insurance, the amortized cost of the software and hardware (including the cameras and lenses and computer), web services for distribution of the files, etc.
It’s fair to charge a full day’s fair pay for a job like that, and that might mean wanting to charge something like $1000 for an experienced photographer, maybe $500 of which actually represents “profit” for the sole proprietor. But that only happens at that price if there are clients willing to pay that price.
For bigger jobs like parties or weddings, it gets a bit more involved, which is why a 2- or 3-shooter wedding job can cost several thousand, or even above $10k.
But for easy jobs like anything in a high volume studio where the lighting is already known, and there aren’t any logistics involved, it should be much cheaper. It just all depends.
I did a gig for a while doing Photoshop clean up of wedding images and portraits.
Just that one step can be an exceptional amount of work.
Wedding images are challenging because venues, decor, wardrobe, etc., are chosen for real-world regular eyeball beauty. In darker settings (many churches, nighttime), or settings lit by bad lights for photography (fluorescent bulbs, LED bulbs without good wide spectrum light, random dance floor stuff), adds a lot of post processing work, and wedding clients tend to be very demanding clients (for good reason). It’s all real work, well beyond what can be seen in the day-of interaction between photographer and client.
I would also highlight the sheer volume.
Somebody wants a few senior pictures taken or their kid in front of some toys and trees and stuff, and you could be dealing with a relatively manageable number.
Weddings take hours, often have dozens of people, and with everything being digital these days you can take a fuckton of photos to make sure that you capture everything possible.
the sheer volume
Picking through hundreds or even thousands of shots and choosing about a few dozen good ones is, yeah, equally difficult.
That’s why it’s important to set expectations in advance. 50 images shot in the same setting and processed in bulk with maybe minor adjustments to each is something very different from 50 images that you have to touch up every single one.
All of your silly little lives are hobbies. Peasants… fuck your wedding hahahaha. Stupid idiots don’t get it. You eventually will. I Quit… Here’s Why the Technician Shortage Is Getting Worse
This comment section sucks lol I don’t even know where to begin.
This place is getting more Reddity every day.
Not every gig is gonna earn you the cost of that camera. And it doesn’t need to.
I work in disability. The act of driving is not considered a skill. Photography is.
Hire whoever took the picture of her.
They’re obviously better.
The old barbershop conundrum
But Doctor! I am Nataliacci!
