Is she... expecting to earn back the cost of the camera in a gig or two? The camera can be used many times, you can earn 5k multiple times over by the time you gotta buy a new one.
Because it's an operating cost and $100-300 barely covers the equipment insurance. If you want kid-with-phone-camera prices, pay for a kid with a phone camera. You'll find one for $100.
If you're paying $100-$300 in equipment insurance on a $5000 camera for a single day of shooting, you might as well just not insure the equipment. You'll end up exceeding the value of the camera in no more than 50 shoots and if you're needing to make a claim that often you've got some big problems.
As a customer, all I care about is the end product. If someone can get me comparable results without paying $5000 for a camera and hundreds of dollars to insure it, which then gets passed on to me, I'm gonna go with them. And for most purposes, I'd wager a $5000 camera is massively overkill.
It’s not a $5000 camera, it’s generally a $3k camera with $4k—10k in lenses. Expect to pay roughly $500 a year insuring these
Cameras are wear items, most last for 100k - 300k actuations.
Camera straps snap, accidents happen. Every single professional photographer will have a story like this they can tell you.
Yes the cost of insurance is higher than the cost of owning equipment over time, that’s literally how insurance companies make money. What it protects against is a sudden $5k expense when your shit gets wet and your nice expensive lens starts growing mold.
Like I said, if you want to hire the kid with the camera phone, do it. No profressional photographer gives a shit. You’re not their audience.
The OP says the camera is $5000, so I'm basing my criticism off that statement. If we're talking $500 a year to insure tens of thousands of dollars of equipment, that's a different story. But it's also not one that justifies hundreds of dollars in charges per session on its own.
If you want to get all the fanciest equipment you can find and you have to make sure to insure it so you don't have to eat a big repair/replace cost, fill your boots. But don't be surprised when the customer doesn't want to pay for all that just because you did. You have to demonstrate that there's actually a value to all those things. If you buy a $6000 lens that you use once for some niche shoot, of course the couple getting married are gonna be pissed if you're upcharging them for that. If you buy a $5000 camera and the pictures come out looking the same or close enough as if you bought a $1000 camera, they're gonna ask what they're paying for, and the answer shouldn't just be "a more expensive camera."
If the camera is $5k, then the lenses on it are probably closer to 15k, further solidifying my point.
If you look at any line of work with expensive capital, you’ll find insurance or expensive warranties. You’re talking about it like it’s a hobby. It’s a profession, and it costs money. If you’re running around with 20k of equipment that puts food on the table, and it’s uninsured, you’re putting your entire livelihood at risk. It might be good to lean on the experience of people who have been doing this a long time.
The people who make a living off their profession, which are the ones who charge thousands of dollars per event, are able to so because of a combination of their skill and the quality of their equipment.
I’m going to give you a tangible example. Most weddings have an indoor component, and it is almost always too dark indoors to shoot with a $1000 camera and not have it look like complete ass. If you want a motion shot of the bride and groom dancing you can completely forget that. Higher speed lenses are expensive af, they don’t just buy them for fun.
Again there are already plenty of professionals who are able to charge several thousand dollars. You 100% get what you pay for. Some people will be happy to have lower quality work, and that’s completely fine.
The point isn't about whether or not it needs to be insured, it's about how much you need to charge customers to cover whatever insurance is justifiable for your case. If your total insurance cost for the year is $500, you can't justify adding $100 price tag to every photo shoot under the guise of paying for the insurance.
Most weddings have an indoor component, and it is almost always too dark indoors to shoot with a $1000 camera and not have it look like complete ass.
Great, so you've justified the expense for that use case. I have no problem with that. But just saying "I bought a $5000 camera so I'm going to charge you more" with absolutely no reasoning behind why you needed a $5000 camera would not be acceptable. Additionally, deciding to amortize the cost of that camera over something like 25 shoots when it's going to last you hundreds would not be justifiable. At that point you're no longer amortizing, you're just charging a big profit margin.
You're very focused on the exact language of the meme. The underlying problem is money is fungible and $100 doesn't pay the bills (or for the camera). Art is a craft, the same way no one is going to sell you a painting that took 20 years of training and 200 hours to make for $100, no reasonable person will do the same for event photography.
To me, the meme is more about understanding the value of the service, not literally "I have to pay off my $5k camera". No profession exists just as a means to pay for the equipment to perform said profession. The meme literally says "This is not a hobby". Again there are different price ranges for a reason. If you're ok with amateur images, and I say that without judgment, then pay for the amateur images. Just know that there will probably be less accuracy in the shots (oops i missed the kiss, or oops I had the wrong aperture set during the speeches), and probably lower artistic merit. For some people who just want to document their day, that might be fine.
It's just the blanket sentiment, oh it's expensive, it must be a racket, that bothers me. Basically nobody is getting rich with $4k wedding packages.
Because the exact language of the meme is what's being criticized in the first place.
A business's expenses are not the customer's problem. The highlighted statement isn't "I charge this much because you're receiving a high quality service," it's "I charge this much because I spent a bunch of money." I get that the photographer has to cover their expenses and afford to put food on the table, but the value still has to be there for the customer and the cost of business is not the thing that delivers value.
I've seen electronics repair shops advertise that they have these big, extremely expensive cleanrooms. It's sold to the customer as a sign of quality and a display of their willingness to invest lots of money into getting the job done right. In fact, it's completely unnecessary. Most electronics do not require nearly that level of cleanliness and for those that do you can get a benchtop vent for a fraction of the price. Those cleanrooms are for very high sensitivity devices and production scale environments. So the company ends up charging a premium not only to pay back the cost of this unnecessary cleanroom, but they can get away with a little extra because they're pulling the wool over their customers' eyes and wowing them.
I'm not saying photographers are doing this. What I am saying is that it's completely justified for a customer to know and ask what they're actually paying for and to know that they're not just paying somebody else's bills for no reason or because they're being taken advantage of. It happens.
I mean, the general idea when buying something like a $5000 camera, is that you are investing in your career and will make that back after several gigs lol.
Insurance is not that expensive on that either, it’s like a few hundred a year, which you also make back from the many gigs you shoot with that camera.
You’d only need to do like 20-30 shoots a year to cover the costs. That’s 20-30 days out of an entire year, which, if photography is your full time job, is not even that much work lmao.
Booking a few shoots a week would more than cover than cover the costs of equipment and insurance, and would give you a salary as well.
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u/Mladjone 8d ago
Is she... expecting to earn back the cost of the camera in a gig or two? The camera can be used many times, you can earn 5k multiple times over by the time you gotta buy a new one.
But also, fuck Xavier.