Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/04/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I definitely agree that it is very nice not to spend money on film on a weekly and monthly basis. I love the freedom of shooting anything and everything without concern of the per frame or per roll cost. But I'm still buying camera batteries, sd and cf cards, hard drives, and on and on and on. The money outlay certainly doesn't stop when you "switch" to digital. The outlay just "switches" to other things to achieve the same result - a print. My take on this probably comes with my age. Once I made an investment in cameras and lenses and then I worked a very long time without dropping money on anything but film and processing. And that expense was picked up by the clients. And by the way the billing rates were larger in 1985 than they are today. The same goes for my graphic design work. A one time investment in a fine drawing board, a set of pens, and a few other tools took me for decades. All other expenses were billable to the client. And again billing rates were higher because "designers" were more than a computer and "InDesign" with your receptionist sitting in front of it. Today - well I'll stop. The digital photography phenomenon has had a lot of fall out. I've heard Tina talk about current "rates" as well. Royalty free CD's full of stock images are part of this equation. Auto focus and an SLR in every soccer mom's front seat is part of this equation. Parents with decent digital cameras are having a serious effect on what used to be called "school" photography. What year did the sporting event photographers become that absurd gallery of motorized bs? And since the digital era - it gets more crazy and crowded every season. They're all getting the same shot. So what's that shot worth? I know that Ted can remember when there were only a few "pros" who could actually follow focus with 300 - 600 mm lens wide open and get the shots. Very little competition in that day. The rest in the pit were just hoping to figure it out and most gave up. The economics of professional photography and graphic design has been seriously impacted by our digitalization. And for most - not positively. Regards, George Lottermoser george@imagist.com On Apr 3, 2007, at 5:48 PM, Slobodan Dimitrov wrote: > Not having to sit on several grand of stock film and processing at > a shot, per client, has its up side.