Posted by Tony Winton on January 20, 2009 at 3:02 PM
We are looking to shoot several events (outdoor horse and rodeo event s), currently we have two events booked with others waiting in the wings. We are trying to determine if it is cheaper/better to purchase the equipment and print our own, or use a lab to print our pictures. If that I n mind, if I were printing 100 prints of various sizes from 4x6 to 11x14, 80% were 4x6 or 5x7, the remaining prints were 8x10 and 11x14, which would be better to use the lab or our own printer.
Thanks
tw
Posted by Steve Foss on January 20, 2009 at 3:52 PM
Tony, I started out doing all my own printing to 8x10 with larger prints going out to White House Custom Color in St. Paul.
After about a year of that I quit doing my own. Figuring in ink, paper, printer depreciation, I wasn't saving money doing it myself (an 8x10 costs me about $2 from WHCC), and when I factored in the extra time it took me to service/maintain the printer instead of pushing an electronic "send" button to order from the print lab, I was actually losing money doing it myself. Time IS money.
I keep a high-quality inkjet printer in my office ready to go in case I get an order from a local client who wants it right away (WHCC gets orders in the lower 48 states back with free two-day shipping) or for printing the odd card, but all the rest of my work goes out to the lab now.
For the type of printing work you mentioned, and when figuring in the added time it takes a photographer to work with the home printer, I can't see any way a person can do it as inexpensively at home/office as they can online through print labs or with an in-town lab if you live in a big enough city to have one. The labs tend to do excellent work very inexpensively.
For fine art work where the photographer really wants total control over all the subtleties of color/tone, etc., I can see where a large format printer in the the photographer's office could be a bigger deal. For that type of work, there are some very respected and high-end print labs like West Coast Imaging, among others, and once a relationship is established with a print lab long distance, and you soft-proof in Photoshop using the printing profiles the labs send you so you can see what your print will look like on your monitor, you can assure top quality even though you're not doing it yourself.
I also think that, if you haven't done your own printing before, starting right out of the gate with fairly large print orders will be an instant headache unless you really like the technical aspects of printing. There's a good bit of setup required with any printer before the best quality is achieved. Mastering the learning curve of software and printer and profiles on a deadline with clients waiting isn't something I'd want to tackle if I could avoid it.
Posted by Larry Puckett on January 20, 2009 at 3:54 PM
I'll comment as someone who has been researching this question. Basically the answer seems to be that on paper on a per print basis you'll save money doing it yourself. That said your initial outlay for a printer and supplies and hardware to get you to the point where you can print and get what you see on your screen may greatly exceed your initial profit. If you shoot jpegs and are happy with what you get from your camera you may be able to send directly to the printer and get good results. However if you shoot raw and want to have all the control over your photos that brings then you can get into a whole new world of technology with a steep learning curve. You'll need a quality monitor that can be calibrated using an expensive piece of hardware/software. Then you'll need to learn Photoshop or similar software using a computer that is fast enough with enough RAM (4GB) to do what you want. You may find that you can get by with the software that comes with your camera (DPP for Canon users) or as I said above just send your jpegs directly to the printer from your camera. The big question is do you plan on this being a continuing process or is this just one time?
We do a lot of event photography, Tony, and would do more if there were more opportunities. Basically it's controlled madness during the shooting, and if you have visions of doing the printing onsite, also envision extra labor costs to factor into your print cost estimates. You're just NOT going to shoot and do your own printing onsite. If you instead envision doing it yourself later, then it becomes a question of just how much is your time worth? If it's a near break even on materials cost versus commercial printing, you won't be paying yourself one skinny little red cent for all the time in printing, much less the extra material cost and aggravation of printer problems.
We use our current lab (H&H Color) as we did the two before. I've heard really good things about Whitehouse too. All of the big labs have what they call "promo packages." This is where you get event printing done up through 8x10 as units (one unit is basically a single sheet, whether a single 8x10, or two 5x7's, or four 4x5's, or eight wallets, or sometimes combos that add up to one sheet). And prices per unit run around $2 in most labs. Prints larger tha 8x10 will probably have to go through the usual portrait division of the lab rather than the promo printing division, and would cost you and the client a whole lot more. We leave it out of the packages, but include a note in on our invoices that ordering larger than 8x10 or additional prints of any size after the event can be done through our studio, but at higher than event prices, so we're covered there.
You pre-design a series of packages for your price sheets based around units- maybe Package A being four 4x5's and 8 wallets (two units), Package B being an 8x10, four 4x5s and 8 wallets (three units total), etc, for three or four or five packages that clients to pick among on your order form. We have them progressing from one unit up through five units (Packages A through E, in our example). We mark the prices up from lab costs using a multiplier of unit costs, maybe 4x, 5x or 6x, depending on what your local market will bear. If you're using a 5x multiplier for example, a 3-unit package costs you $6 and retails for $30.
Onsite, it takes at least one helper to work with you to handle the paperwork and money collecting. In truth two helpers are better when you anticipate more sittings. Your helper collects order sheets and money, then signs people onto your shot log. You usually shoot two shots of each person or group, and your lab picks the best. You submit the shot log and package description to the lab along with your image files, and they print it up in sequence to match your shot log, then return it to you for breakdown and distribution.
This system is really manageable, especially with two helpers (one to handle money, order forms and shot log, and the second to manage people). All you do is shoot. My wife has shot as many as 400 sittings in one long evening, followed by 300 more the next evening for the same event. She was limp as a ragdoll by the end of the second night. But at an average of around $30 per package, do the math, and she was well compensated for two evenings of effort. After one evening like that, much less two back to back, THE ABSOLUTE VERY LAST POSSIBLE STINKING THING IN THE WORLD she would ever want to do is sit down the next day and turn out around 2100 prints (700 sittings x 3 units on average).
The really good thing about event photography is getting your name and photos in the hands of a large number of people at bargain prices. You just can't buy better advertising for your other photo services, and that's why the labs call them "promo" photos.
I've rambled on too long, but I hope I've covered the right ground for you. If not, redirect me!
Posted by Kelly Rowe on January 21, 2009 at 10:44 AM
I have dabbled a good bit in event photography over the last couple of years. The key is to make the sale at the event. These are almost always spur of the moment sales. After the event is over, participants will possibly view them on a website and maybe place an order, but the percentage is really, really low. Our answer to that was a snap lab printer by sony. The price of admission is about $1300 and 4X6 prints cost around 20 cents. 5X7 prints are about 60 cents a copy. Clearly this is a two person system. One does the shooting and one does the printing. The snap labs don't require that you bring a computer to the event, unless you want to store the files. You can print directly from the cards and the color management is fine. There are no profiles for the snap labs when printing from a computer, so color management can be difficult. I have a photoshop action that makes sickly adjustments to the images on screen, that produce good quality color when shipped to the snap lab. Each image is printed and laminated in about 20 seconds.
In studio we do a lot of fine art printing, both portraits and historical Savannah scenes. We have switched to printing on Epson Exhibition Fiber, on a 7800 and a couple of R2400s. It's unGodly expensive, but I've never seen more vibrant images from any other paper and ink combination. The stock is heavy enough that you can get away with not mounting anything up to 8X10. Do the online labs offer EEF/K3 ink option?
Discussion
4 repliesThanks
tw
After about a year of that I quit doing my own. Figuring in ink, paper, printer depreciation, I wasn't saving money doing it myself (an 8x10 costs me about $2 from WHCC), and when I factored in the extra time it took me to service/maintain the printer instead of pushing an electronic "send" button to order from the print lab, I was actually losing money doing it myself. Time IS money.
I keep a high-quality inkjet printer in my office ready to go in case I get an order from a local client who wants it right away (WHCC gets orders in the lower 48 states back with free two-day shipping) or for printing the odd card, but all the rest of my work goes out to the lab now.
For the type of printing work you mentioned, and when figuring in the added time it takes a photographer to work with the home printer, I can't see any way a person can do it as inexpensively at home/office as they can online through print labs or with an in-town lab if you live in a big enough city to have one. The labs tend to do excellent work very inexpensively.
For fine art work where the photographer really wants total control over all the subtleties of color/tone, etc., I can see where a large format printer in the the photographer's office could be a bigger deal. For that type of work, there are some very respected and high-end print labs like West Coast Imaging, among others, and once a relationship is established with a print lab long distance, and you soft-proof in Photoshop using the printing profiles the labs send you so you can see what your print will look like on your monitor, you can assure top quality even though you're not doing it yourself.
I also think that, if you haven't done your own printing before, starting right out of the gate with fairly large print orders will be an instant headache unless you really like the technical aspects of printing. There's a good bit of setup required with any printer before the best quality is achieved. Mastering the learning curve of software and printer and profiles on a deadline with clients waiting isn't something I'd want to tackle if I could avoid it.
Larry
We use our current lab (H&H Color) as we did the two before. I've heard really good things about Whitehouse too. All of the big labs have what they call "promo packages." This is where you get event printing done up through 8x10 as units (one unit is basically a single sheet, whether a single 8x10, or two 5x7's, or four 4x5's, or eight wallets, or sometimes combos that add up to one sheet). And prices per unit run around $2 in most labs. Prints larger tha 8x10 will probably have to go through the usual portrait division of the lab rather than the promo printing division, and would cost you and the client a whole lot more. We leave it out of the packages, but include a note in on our invoices that ordering larger than 8x10 or additional prints of any size after the event can be done through our studio, but at higher than event prices, so we're covered there.
You pre-design a series of packages for your price sheets based around units- maybe Package A being four 4x5's and 8 wallets (two units), Package B being an 8x10, four 4x5s and 8 wallets (three units total), etc, for three or four or five packages that clients to pick among on your order form. We have them progressing from one unit up through five units (Packages A through E, in our example). We mark the prices up from lab costs using a multiplier of unit costs, maybe 4x, 5x or 6x, depending on what your local market will bear. If you're using a 5x multiplier for example, a 3-unit package costs you $6 and retails for $30.
Onsite, it takes at least one helper to work with you to handle the paperwork and money collecting. In truth two helpers are better when you anticipate more sittings. Your helper collects order sheets and money, then signs people onto your shot log. You usually shoot two shots of each person or group, and your lab picks the best. You submit the shot log and package description to the lab along with your image files, and they print it up in sequence to match your shot log, then return it to you for breakdown and distribution.
This system is really manageable, especially with two helpers (one to handle money, order forms and shot log, and the second to manage people). All you do is shoot. My wife has shot as many as 400 sittings in one long evening, followed by 300 more the next evening for the same event. She was limp as a ragdoll by the end of the second night. But at an average of around $30 per package, do the math, and she was well compensated for two evenings of effort. After one evening like that, much less two back to back, THE ABSOLUTE VERY LAST POSSIBLE STINKING THING IN THE WORLD she would ever want to do is sit down the next day and turn out around 2100 prints (700 sittings x 3 units on average).
The really good thing about event photography is getting your name and photos in the hands of a large number of people at bargain prices. You just can't buy better advertising for your other photo services, and that's why the labs call them "promo" photos.
I've rambled on too long, but I hope I've covered the right ground for you. If not, redirect me!
In studio we do a lot of fine art printing, both portraits and historical Savannah scenes. We have switched to printing on Epson Exhibition Fiber, on a 7800 and a couple of R2400s. It's unGodly expensive, but I've never seen more vibrant images from any other paper and ink combination. The stock is heavy enough that you can get away with not mounting anything up to 8X10. Do the online labs offer EEF/K3 ink option?