Investment in your photographic equipment and other expenses

[dxqcanada]

if you think this is bad, you should try playing guitar, or scuba diving ...

I am also a SCUBA diver ... and I have still spent more on Photography (including the travel costs).

 

[Josh66]

How many of you are OK on spending more than $1000.00 on your photographic equipment ?

I do not have a single photographic item that costs $1000 or more, but I'm running out of cheap stuff to buy. I can see spending that much on a lens or body (most likely a body) in the next year or two. ...I did just drop a thousand bucks at B&H the other day...

My total investment in photo gear is probably about $7000. Maybe a little less...

 

[c.cloudwalker]

Not the same.... the difference is your skill set is much more profitable. Your ROI is more favorable than the typical photographer.

PayScale - Aerospace Engineer Salary, Average Salaries

PayScale - Photographer Salary, Average Salaries

Also, I would surmise that much of your equipment is specialized with no cheaper options. Photographers have many options.. many photographers can still deliver a good product even with middle level prosumer equipment (see sears, lifetouch studios).

It would be a lot fairer to compare the "typical" photographer to my mechanic son who runs an auto repair shop out of his home garage than to an aviation mechanic (not an aerospace engineer by the way) like Josh. If Josh's skill set is not a lot more valuable, I am not getting into another airplane...

And that is not being nice to my son, actually, because his skill set is quite valuable. He just chooses to not pay the high prices for specialized tools, computer databases, computers, etc, needed to work on the latest cars.

But as I said earlier it is not a competition. It is all about getting the tools that you need to do the job. I would not spend that kind of money on a camera (and that is just one camera) if I wasn't going to make a lot more than the local Sears portrait studio. But if I don't spend that money, I won't get the jobs that pay either.

Just to stay in the mechanical kind of field, price a Chimera 10x20 feet softbox with the strobes (it takes a strobe for every 5 sq/ft). Sure expensive but how are you going to shoot some of those car ads without it? You get the tools you have to get. That's all.

I don't know what else to say to make you understand this.

True, the amateur market subsidizes the pro market to an extent (millions of amateurs/hobbyists vs. who knows how many studios) but visit some commercial studios and you'll be amazed by the amount of money that is poured into the gear. And they don't do it just for the fun. They do it because they have to.


And no, I didn't/don't shoot weddings with a digital Hassy. There was no such thing as digital photography when I was shooting weddings. Sorry, I'm an old fart.

 

[Antithesis]

That's an interesting comparison (usayit). I always had that thought about digital, but lost it somewhere along the lines. But you also have to keep in mind that a lot of folks don't put a full 200k shots on a body. I seem to see a lot of used bodies selling with about 10-15k shots or so, if they came from an amateur. My old boss actually went through 2 shutters on his 5D, so he got his monies worth.

And as for the Professional to Amateur comparison, I guess I'm in the wrong age bracket to see "all" those amateurs with hyper-expensive gear. Most people I've met usually have a couple of mid-level or third party lenses and a/some mid-level bodies (prosumer at best). I assume a large number of amateur's are closer to my age bracket as well, at least judging from flickr and even these forums.

All the pro's (wedding photog's mostly) that I've met or worked with usually have $10-20k worth of gear in their bag. I know that there are probably a lot of wedding shooters that will sometimes have lower end gear, but people that do it full-time tend to drop a lot of cash on their gear from what I've seen. I shot with one guy who actually brought along a few thousand dollars of lighting equipment and 3 (large) bags of lenses and bodies, just to shoot a wedding. I'm thinking he had a minimum of 40 grand worth of gear, but he was kind of a maniac about it.

 

[Antithesis]

if you think this is bad, you should try playing guitar, or scuba diving ...

I am also a SCUBA diver ... and I have still spent more on Photography (including the travel costs).

Or cars. I used to justify spending ridiculous amounts of money on my old subaru, not to mention the buy-in cost of the actual car. Obviously tens of thousands of dollars. And I have met guys close to my age who have dumped nearly a hundred grand into their car. It's absolutely insane.

 

[Derrel]

In the early 1990's, the pro-level photographic supply house in my local area did a survey of working professional photographers; the median average was 15 years in business, and a median capitalization of $84,000 per business with a sample size of around 200 professional photographers in a metro area of 1.5 million. This was of course, all pre-digital. At that time, $84,000 was a lot more money than it is today.

Still, I'm not sure if the cost of gear has really gone up "that" much. In 1982, minimum wage in my state was $3.25/hr with a take-home pay of around $2.70 an hour and I was a 20 year old college student with a part-time job and a full class load; full-time college tuition was only $385 per TERM. I purchased a brand new 105mm f/2.5 Nikon AiS, mail-order from a NYC company for $269.95.--in other words ONE HUNDRED hours' worth of after-tax work at minimum wage to buy a new Nikon telephoto lens--which I still have to this day, 28 years later....

Does it cost 100 hours of minimum wage, after-tax work to buy a single prime telephoto like a Canon 85mm 1.8 EF, which is a very comparable lens? If anything, I think the real cost of lenses has gone down over time. Still--I've been amassing equipment in fits and starts over the better part of two decades, buying mostly used equipment at bargain prices. To me, used lenses are the real cost savings,and I have bought a lot of clean,used lenses; the introduction of the Nikon D100 brought more good,clean used Nikon glass onto the market than I could have imagined, and the Nikon D70 had a huge impact as well. So did the huge rush to Canon when the D2h hit the market within a month of the Canon 1D-II 8.2MP sports/action camera.

As far as I am concerned, the used lens market is the way to get what you want, with huge savings. Of course, this is by buying at walk-in retail, not from the mega web-stores where the prices are as high as the market will possibly bear.

 

[Josh66]

It would be a lot fairer to compare the "typical" photographer to my mechanic son who runs an auto repair shop out of his home garage than to an aviation mechanic (not an aerospace engineer by the way) like Josh. If Josh's skill set is not a lot more valuable, I am not getting into another airplane...

Believe it or not, an auto mechanic can usually make more than an aircraft mechanic. Think of it this way - Aircraft mechanics are highly specialized, I do one thing, and one thing only - structures. I drill holes and shoot rivets (overly simplified, but you get the point). An auto mechanic has to know how to do everything - engines, body work, transmission, all that... All of those things would be separate jobs in the aviation world. I have limited experience in those other areas, but the bulk of it is in heavy structures.
That's what I do every day.

And, if you saw the **** I've seen - you wouldn't fly, lol!!

With overtime, I could make the same as an engineer - according to that chart. I don't work a ton of overtime though... Typical pay for an aircraft mechanic with 10 years experience is in the $25-30/hr. range.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

It would be a lot fairer to compare the "typical" photographer to my mechanic son who runs an auto repair shop out of his home garage than to an aviation mechanic (not an aerospace engineer by the way) like Josh. If Josh's skill set is not a lot more valuable, I am not getting into another airplane...

Believe it or not, an auto mechanic can usually make more than an aircraft mechanic. Think of it this way - Aircraft mechanics are highly specialized, I do one thing, and one thing only - structures. I drill holes and shoot rivets (overly simplified, but you get the point). An auto mechanic has to know how to do everything - engines, body work, transmission, all that... All of those things would be separate jobs in the aviation world. I have limited experience in those other areas, but the bulk of it is in heavy structures.
That's what I do every day.

And, if you saw the **** I've seen - you wouldn't fly, lol!!

With overtime, I could make the same as an engineer - according to that chart. I don't work a ton of overtime though... Typical pay for an aircraft mechanic with 10 years experience is in the $25-30/hr. range.

Fooking sh*t! I'm never flying again. :lmao:

Since you once mentioned what you make (chat, probably) I knew when I wrote what I wrote that my son actually makes as much as you do. The big difference is that he is self employed. As such, he doesn't get the $15/hr you get in benefits (assuming a $30/hr pay and the average of what employers pay in benefits which is half as much as what actually show up on your pay check.)

Not only my son doesn't get that extra $15/hr but he has to pay for his benefits out of the $30/hr that show on his "pay check" which, as any self employed person can tell you, can cost quite a small fortune.

Life's a beach and then you get a sun burn!

 

[Josh66]

Yeah, benefits are a big deal... If I had to pay for my benefits (medical insurance, disability, vacation time, et al) out of pocket - you could easily deduct $10/hr (maybe more) from my pay.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

Yeah, benefits are a big deal... If I had to pay for my benefits (medical insurance, disability, vacation time, et al) out of pocket - you could easily deduct $10/hr (maybe more) from my pay.

You bet! The average in this country is half as much as the employee's salary spent on benefits. If you make $30/hr your company spends $15/ hr on your benefits. What most "company" people don't realize is that a self employed person would spend more than that to get the same level of benefits.

So, someone like my son would spend, let's say, $20/hr on his benefits which would leave him with an actual salary of $10/hr. Scary? You bet.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

In the early 1990's, the pro-level photographic supply house in my local area did a survey of working professional photographers; the median average was 15 years in business, and a median capitalization of $84,000 per business with a sample size of around 200 professional photographers in a metro area of 1.5 million.

I'm just going to throw numbers around for the sake of argument because I have no idea what the actual numbers could be.

We start with an average of $84,000. Let's say a decent portrait studio only needs $30,000 so that means another studio spent $138,000.

Now, let's say a Sears (or such) studio opens with about $15,000, that means another studio needed $153,000.

And there are way more studios that open fairly cheaply than there are big expensive studios, so it is left to the imagination what can be spent by one of those.

I once had the opportunity to visit the studio of a big tire company when they were trying to hire me. They had no problem with money so their studio was designed to hold a full 18 wheeler. Just imagine... what that place cost to put together.

And that is what I was trying to convey to Usayit without flinging dollars around because the dollar amount does not matter. A studio is a tool and some of those tools, some of the studios out there are absolutely unbelievable.

 

[Derrel]

I'm just going to throw numbers around for the sake of argument because I have no idea what the actual numbers could be.

Hey--you could work on Wall Street!!!!

One small point--the survey covered 194 studios and the average was a median average, not the mean average--so half of the studios were capitalized below the 84k figure and half were above 84k....there were a couple that had self-reported figures of around $200,000.

I found it somewhat amusing that Austin,Texas-based commercial and advertising photographer Kirk Tuck was lamenting how great and fantastic the pay scale was in advertising photography in 1985, and how very poorly it is paying in 2009-2010. He made his comments on The Online Photographer blog the other day, commenting on how much "free time" he has now, and emphasized that point with the use of the words "literally FREE time". Obviously, he misses the good ole' days before there came to be so many photographers. I think today a commercial studio can be built/run for (in relative,inflation-adjusted) less money than 20 years ago, when an E-6 line and full darkroom meant hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of chemicals needed to be used each week just to process E-6 and make proofs in the higher-end studios.

I dunno...there are so many business models now,and so many different degrees of professional photography the entire field has been reinvented several times over since the mid-1980's.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

I'm just going to throw numbers around for the sake of argument because I have no idea what the actual numbers could be.

Hey--you could work on Wall Street!!!!

One small point--the survey covered 194 studios and the average was a median average, not the mean average--so half of the studios were capitalized below the 84k figure and half were above 84k....there were a couple that had self-reported figures of around $200,000.

Wall Street? OMG you are trying to kill me :lmao:

The rest of what you say I don't understand except, maybe, it seems to agree with what I said

Does it?

 

[usayit]

In the early 1990's, the pro-level photographic supply house in my local area did a survey of working professional photographers; the median average was 15 years in business, and a median capitalization of $84,000 per business with a sample size of around 200 professional photographers in a metro area of 1.5 million. This was of course, all pre-digital. At that time, $84,000 was a lot more money than it is today.

Interesting... but just to be clear.

The topic of amateur vs professionals regarding invested in photographic gear didn't include the capital required to run a business. It costs at least $600k just for the franchise of McDonalds to start flipping burgers. An amateur burger flipper could be far better equipped at home and still pay a fraction of the costs. This is the same for any studio versus amateur comparison.

As far as I am concerned, the used lens market is the way to get what you want, with huge savings. Of course, this is by buying at walk-in retail, not from the mega web-stores where the prices are as high as the market will possibly bear.

I built a business around this concept. Buy equipment from professional chains in bulk and resell to the amateurs. The issue was that the professionals weren't consuming enough to keep up with the amateurs' taste in expensive high end equipment.


I agree to disagree but realize that

* the notion that studio photographers from lifetouch (sears, flash, etc) and school photographers don't count are not real professional photographers thus don't count in the discussion is just inaccurate.
* including business costs in the equation (my statement is better equipped) isn't fair
* ignoring the fact that Hassy's $30k camera is sold to a very small niche market and pales into comparison the amateurs driving the high end equipment lines of Nikon and Canon.
* ignoring the fact that the typical photographer isn't pulling the same income levels to support such large investments expensive equipment.

all skew the discussion from the typical amateur from the typical professional.

The typical professional photographer is not the hassy equipped, studio owner, and magazine sponsored professional. They are the guys that shoot school portraits.. the events.. the struggling artist.. the small newspaper journalist with $1500 budget (recent thread) etc..

Simply put... if you like to shoot with expensive equipment, your chances are far better pursuing a high paying non-photographic job and funding it as a hobby than pursuing it through a photographic job.

 

[dxqcanada]

... so back to amateur photographers ... most of the non-Professional photographers on this forum spend in excess of $2000.00 for this hobby and do not feel that is excessive ?