Photographers..how much do you charge for a DVD that the couple can print from if it's not included in the package?

There are too many variables in the type of coverage you are having to be able to give you a fair idea of cost without knowing a lot more. Disks of images can be a lot of work.

We're looking for coverage from me getting ready to the 'fake' cutting of the cake before the meal and speeches, mainly candid/reportage style with a few group shots. 35 photos in an album and a DVD for reference. Their website also includes mounted prints in this package but I don't think we'd bother with that. Website price is £925 but someone I know got this for £835 (could have been mates rates as he did some work for her).

Peter, I remember you saying that discs can be tricky due to resolution etc but can't remeber the details. Would you mind repeating so I know what questions to go armed with? (I'm nowhere near you unfortunately!)

We are having a DVD only package for £1K. The package includes coverage through to the speeches and a pre-wedding shoot too. She is throwing in 20 prints for us though and any more would be £5 each to print if we wanted this. If we wanted an album it would be an extra £600.

A couple of other togs we looked at had very similar prices.

<is glad she had a photographer friend, when she sees these prices! Wow!

E x

Hi! Peter's right really, you'll find lots of fairly cheap photographers will throw this in with their low priced packages, but sometimes the disc may only contain lo-res images, suitable for printing upto 6x4" but not very good above that. Some photographers will charge extra for a disc with hi-res images that you can safely print upto larger sizes. You'll find the cost of this reflects the photographers prices in general - i.e a cheaper photographer may only charge £0 - £200 whereas a more pricier tog will charge upwards of £400 - £600, sometimes more. These discs are usually priced at the average loss of reprint sales after the wedding as you have the disc for home-printing. For instance - my after sales average at £400, therefore this is what I charge for the disc as I will lose this income if the couple purchases the disc. As a VERY ball-park figure, for a £1000 package expect to pay an extra £300-£400 for your disc of images. Hope this makes sense!

Nicola

x

Our package was £1200, with the DVD being an extra £300.

Our DVD package is £700, and to add a DVD to an album package is an extra £250.

HTH x

www.rswphotography.co.uk

Hi there,

All of our packages include a high res. DVD with your images on for you to print yourselves. I really don't believe in holding couples to ransom by asking them to pay extra for a service they have already paid for.

Hope your meeting goes well -

Stefan

Its a difficult question to answer, because as others have said there are a lot of variables, one of the most important being the length of your day. Its a lot more work to edit an 8 hour day, than just 2 hours at a registry office.

Also its very difficult to compare a decent professional photographer to the hordes of low end, inexperienced photographers currently advertsing for weddings. Its well known that a lot of cheap, 'CD only' photographers simply just burn the images to disc without performing even the most basic of post processing. This is why they are cheap, and why you'll also read of many complaints that their photos simply are not that good.

A proper professional will post process, using specialist colour calibrated equipment, this ensures that when you go to print at a lab, the colours will be perfect. The professional may well also do further editing and airbrushing.

Personally I supply DVDs priced on a sliding scale, i.e. the price of the DVD comes down as you spend x amount on prints / albums etc.

At the moment I charge £90 for 40 images, and £4 per image thereafter.

I do a minimum of 4 hours coverage (£350) and then offer CDs of high-res images (all fully processed, not just straight from camera, printable up to 10"x14"), albums (starting at £115, up to £1000) and prints (starting at £6 per image for a 6x4)

My prices are increasing on 1st September, though, and the main area of increase will be the DVD (going up to around £180) as I know it's far too cheap for the amount of work it takes. I am also thinking of only offering the DVD with album/print sales, since my last few brides have commented that the images look so much nicer, and more special, framed or in an album than they do on screen.

This is so true.......most peoples monitors are not set up for viewing images properly. A quality print from a quality digital file or negative will be far better......

Peter

You want to ensure that the files are of a reasonable size. There are variables and many that claim that more than 3megs is a waste. I don't tend to go with that and as an example, my jpegs end up at around 4500x3000 pixels which equates roughly to around 9-14 megs each file(depending on circumstances of the shot).I would though probably ask your photographer for files over 5 megs and capable of 10x7 prints.

As I have mentioned many times before, be well aware of potential disk failure at some time in the future. It doesn't take much to damage a disk as most ones that are produced do not have an extra coating that film dvds have. I would recommend backing up any disk you get every 3-5 years.....and possibly even store the files online for added security and futureproofing.

hth

Peter

Thank you so much for all your replies! I've found another photographer that offers HIGH RES CD ROMs inc copyright to reproduce prints as part of quite a few of her packages.

I may sound like a complete luddite here, but what's the difference between a CD ROM and a DVD? And will quality be better with a DVD? Sorry if I'm asking the same question that's already been answered...bit of a technophobe

A CD will only store around 700 megs of information, although some do go up to 900megs (albeit not all readers can read these) This means that it would hold less than 100 images based on file sizes that I mentioned above. A DVD disk holds around 4.5 Gigs worth of info which is a shedload of digital files.......Neither is better quality than the other, its about size!!!!

hth

Peter

A CD will only store around 700 megs of information, although some do go up to 900megs (albeit not all readers can read these) This means that it would hold less than 100 images based on file sizes that I mentioned above. A DVD disk holds around 4.5 Gigs worth of info which is a shedload of digital files.......Neither is better quality than the other, its about size!!!!

hth

Peter

edited to add that make sure you get a printing rights file on the disk....many labs won't touch files that where they believe that a professional photographers copyright may be infringed.......This can be in the form of a .doc file on the disk giving permission, or what I do which is to metatag each image with the rights in addition to the document.

I havent posted much on here- been more of a lurker. But we have just gone through the process of interviewing & choosing a photographer. One of the most important things for us was to get the photos on a disc & not be obliged to get an album as we live overseas & would like to create our own including all the photos from our party at home too. There is so much variation in the style & price it was amazing, we spoke to 5 people ranging from 500 - 1800 pounds, and decided on one for 800. We chose him because he provides between 600-800 photos of the 1000's he takes on 2 discs at different resolutions- one for printing, one for emailing, he said that the bride & groom should be the ones that own the copyright to their wedding day- which I firmly believed in, & he took amazing relaxed photos! And when we asked how long he would be ther for he said 'a minimum of 6 hours, but until I feel I've captured enough'

One guy wanted 10 per additional photo on disc, another wanted 250 for 40 photos, another would give us the disc unedited for 600, such variations! I'm so glad we put some time into it & have got a photographer & price we are happy with

Thanks again all, feel much better informed now!