event price

thebaz

I have been asked to take photos of an upcoming dinner dance .
The idea is to get some photos to be used on a web site , but i was also going to create an album of the event and put them on cd .
I am newish to photography, so it would be good experience , but if i make the effort to go , i dont want to do it for free . Will have to purchase decent flash !
Would i be best charging for my services for an hour or 2 , if so how much ?
Is it worth trying to sell cd's of the event afterwards ? I was thinking of charging 20 euros a pop !

Any advice welcome !!

Borderfox

Charge €80 per hour for the event and travelling expenses, be very careful giving away images as you will make nothing from these images and if you are selling them bear this in mind.

Borderfox

Also think of bring a small photo printer with you and do some portraits and print them off for sale?

thebaz

Thanks Borderfox, i was going to get a decent dye sub printer , but want to see how things go first.
I have a cheap , HP Photosmart 335 mini printer , that only prints 6x 4 s, would this be appropriate or look a little cheapskate -- the 6 x 4 prints are ok !

Borderfox

6x4s are fine, sell them at €7.50 each and more if you stick them in a mount. Dye sub is the way to go as they are more touch resistant than inkjet and you will have people having a look at them. feel free to pm me if you want any more info.

B0rG

my 2 cents

Going shooting dance competition and being "newish" to photography will yield 1 good photo out of 100. Conditions will be: fast (sport) photography with low light. So you'll need to shoot high ISO's and fast exposure times. Good zoom lens (Canon 70-200 2.8 (may be IS) or equivalent) and external flash is a must. For a web you may get away with fast prime (i.e. 50 1.8), but this is tricky lens, you'll have to spend some time with it before shooting dancers.

Shooting with external flas will require training on itself - close to 500 photos made before. Recommended reading:
http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/index.html

Printing photos on the spot is a good advice of course, but you'd be very busy shooting dancers all the time - as I said 1 good photo out of 100

And shoot in RAW so bring along a lot of memory

To be honest, I'd be shy of charging money for this... Do the shooting first, then sell the photos, that'll be fair imo...

thebaz

B0rG wrote:

my 2 cents

Going shooting dance competition and being "newish" to photography will yield 1 good photo out of 100. Conditions will be: fast (sport) photography with low light. So you'll need to shoot high ISO's and fast exposure times. Good zoom lens (Canon 70-200 2.8 (may be IS) or equivalent) and external flash is a must. For a web you may get away with fast prime (i.e. 50 1.8), but this is tricky lens, you'll have to spend some time with it before shooting dancers.

Shooting with external flas will require training on itself - close to 500 photos made before. Recommended reading:
http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/index.html

Printing photos on the spot is a good advice of course, but you'd be very busy shooting dancers all the time - as I said 1 good photo out of 100

And shoot in RAW so bring along a lot of memory

To be honest, I'd be shy of charging money for this... Do the shooting first, then sell the photos, that'll be fair imo...

Its not a dance competition, just a dinner dance , so i just plan shooting groups eating , smiling , maybe even dancing and anything else required .
I agree about the charge of money, primarily i want them to be happy with what they get , and then like any business build up slowly , by word of mouth.
But i dont want to be at a loss, which i will be by buying an external flash , lookin at 150 or so .
If i clear 200 , and there happy with what i shoot and as such i break even or so -- happy days !.

Fionn

i've done some indoor stuff groups and that and it's a challenge the first time i tried i didn't have an external flash and got lucky because i was able to take small groups at a time (about 4/5 people) which worked out ok but i had to chuck out the larger groups of about 30/40 because the flash couldn't cope. I now have a Speedlite 430EX which does fine for these kind of shots - it has a tilt head so you can angle the flash etc.
also
If your doing indoor low light shots like dinner dances or stuff at churches you need a flash and a good lens otherwise you'll get disappointing results.
and maybe a bad name!
good luck with it anyway

Dundhoone

Make sure you get lots of practice in with the flash before the event - it can be very tough to judge how much flash to use to get a nice pic. I've mine a few months and still struggling!!

Zillah

You can't expect them to pay for all your equipment. And you won't be "at a loss", you get to keep the equipment, right?