Providing Services

Hello everyone,

I've been searching for quite a while but I'm not finding what I'm looking for.

I'm finally booking my first paid LF photoshoot. I need to come up with pricing that makes sense. I'm curious how other deal with clients with LF photography.

So far I have my usual sitting fee, milage out of town. Do people charge a film/develop charge per shot? I'm coming up with $10 B&W and $14.50 for Color with home developing. Then they want digital scans done. I have no idea what to charge there.

Any tips or threads I may of missed pertaining to this?

Thanks,

Rick

Lots of pricing information available online. I take it you are doing portraits? In addition to Google searching, go to websites of your local portrait studio(s).

I don't break down pricing. Clients don't generally care what developing and scanning costs/prices are. In my experience they want to know the price to download the images, and for prints if they ordered them. I look at all delivery modes of photography in a similar way, pricing-wise. This means digital, medium format film and large format film.

Digital scan pricing will vary all over the place depending on film size and what kind of scans you want - drum scans are generally the most expensive. It might make more sense to get an Epson 800/850 and do the scanning yourself. I don't think you need ultra high resolution for portraits unless you want to showcase every wrinkle and skin imperfection.

Some scanning folks charge depending on file size in MB/GB

Thanks for the insight chassis. I see lots of digital pricing all the time but never anyone doing large format. Yes portraits is something I'd prefer to specialize in with LF. I see people with digital pricing that is through the roof. So no matter if you shoot digital or film your pricing is roughly the same?

The Lab in Vancouver charges $6 to develop a 4x5 negative (I would be self developing). I have recently bought the V850 Pro as well. I think if I was to send the negatives off for drum scanning it would be for a gallery show or something to that extent. I see the same business scans negatives as well. The price they put on an 8x12 (8x10) in my case is $22. At the same time digital people go and charge an arm and a leg for one digital. Ugh.

I'd take your inputs (time, materials, lab fees, profit...) and calculate a single package price for the client. Look at some portrait photographers in your area to get some ideas of how they do it. For example: $XXX for a one hour shoot, includes X retouched images as digital downloads. Extra images $XXX per image. Travel time outside Vancouver at $XX/hour. If you offer prints you can also price those out.

Who keeps the negatives? You or the client?

I would wonder why a client should choose LF film as a recording medium when all they will get as a result are digital files and digital prints. Why not just use a recent DSLR, perhaps a medium-format one?

The unique feature of film is, in my opinion, the silver printing process - either black-and-white or RA4. If there is no way to use that unique selling point, then using a digital camera would make more economic sense for your business, or not?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MartinP

I would wonder why a client should choose LF film as a recording medium when all they will get as a result are digital files and digital prints. Why not just use a recent DSLR, perhaps a medium-format one?

The unique feature of film is, in my opinion, the silver printing process - either black-and-white or RA4. If there is no way to use that unique selling point, then using a digital camera would make more economic sense for your business, or not?

---

First is that you can also use silver printing and RA-4 with digital files, with a Lambda or Frontier machines.

I also think IMHO shooting digital may be the best choice for a Pro today, anyway some Pros are able to take advantage fom film and from the raising prestige of shooting film.

Using film for the capture and later scanning is still today a technical/aesthetical Pro choice, even in the case result is digital. I'm not saying one thing is better than the other, this depends on the photographer criterion for the particular job.

Film Pro usage is not very common today, but let me present some breathtaking examples:

> José Villa, http://josevilla.com/

> Star Wars: The last Jedi. This December 2017 Disney/Lucasfilm will release that is mostly shot with film stock, then scanned. In this case we are talking about an imaging product of the $200 million budget kind, aspiring to reach from 1000 to 2000 at box office, and something like that from merchandising, toys, etc. This suggests that somebody like Disney may prefer film in front of $200,000 digital birds for a particular job.

> Dunkirk (Nolan), I've seen the 65mm film projection... gorgeous !!! Well, also I've seen the crappy DCP projection, this was pure crap compared to the 65mm, sorry but there is no other word to say it. But when I'll see the Blue-Ray in a good TV I'm sure I'll feel the gorgeous film footprint in the digital device.

rmagnell, unless your client is specifically asking you for film, in my view is there is no difference in pricing between film and digital.