On Friday, January 17, 2003, at 08:58 AM, Mike Johnston wrote:
Mike:Exactly so. The professional is the one who must be hard-headed about justifying the cost of everything.The amateur can buy all the Leicas he wants. <g>
That's actually a very good point. I subscribe to another list dedicated to digital cameras and capture called Prorental and many members there moved to digital because it made good business sense. I think that is fundamental difference between the potential Pentax digital SLR users here and the digital back users there:
- they use digital cameras to generate their primary source of income.
- leasing allows them to consider it a business expense and afford all the equipment they need
- it's much easier and faster to color balance and neutralize grays with the click of a mouse instead of putting filters over lenses and/or lights.
- you don't blow money on lots of Polaroid tests
- they don't have to keep the art director entertained while waiting for film to be developed
- the prepress house doesn't mess up the color so often
- labs don't mess up the processing
- some digital backs have a 10-stop latitude (manufacturer's claims)
- they have a lot more control over the entire process (flip side: they take on more responsibility for the production)
There have been discussions about how they cover the cost of consumables like memory cards and batteries. One method was to charge the customer a "digital capture" fee, to cover the cost of burning up some life on the memory card, batteries and CD burner when they burn the photos onto the CDs. I think some charged a capture fee as high as $10 per image (we're talking about 14MB to 48MB files here). That may or may not fly today: I read somewhere in a recent issue of PDN that the New York Times used to pay a digital capture allowance to their freelance photographers but that they don't do that anymore.
--jc
