Poll: How much will the R5 cost?

highlights wrote:

The Bad Photographer wrote:

highlights wrote:

As a pro canon user the question with any new gear is that of cost effectiveness in terms of usability and utility for the user and outcome for the client. So in terms of operation efficiency will the R5 save me money and convenience in operation, and/or produce a better outcome for the client over say the 5ds 6dii/R combos we currently use for weddings/landscape/archiving/studio or the 1DXiii we use for sports or action?

This test meant for us we skipped the 5DIV which (we do have a copy) as it lacked the tasks it is the best hence the copy).

The RL glass is quite something but will the client notice/require the optical improvements and will they be prepared to pay to cover the capital cost - especially in the tight financial spot we find ourselves in due to this pandemic.

Whilst I love new gear, I also run a business, and as one of the few still employing staff photographers everything has to be efficient and cost effective. Personally if the new R is going to cost me double that of say still available new two generation old 5ds/r I might struggle to justify the upgrade even if the IBS means that the much used EF 24-70 II and EF 16-35 III, EF 85 etc (and RF 28-70) will "become" stabilized!

Monty

Hi Monty,

What percentage of your expenses is the equipment? Seems after you pay staff and other expenses it's not that much over the lifespan of the equipment. I also know you have a lot of equipment so yeah it gets pricey.

Sorry for being tardy in my response – but I am just back from a 3 day assignment micro imaging bugs in the field for a natural science textbook. Very interesting.

My calculation of gear cost by job has undergone change and refinement over the last 40 odd years from a % of revenue on a job to the actual use – and therefore “wear” depending on use. Soccer rugby, hockey, motor racing, motorbike racing etc can result in in thousands of frames a day/hour as opposed to a couple of thousand for a wedding or only dozens for a family portrait sitting where the photographer labour time and therefore cost can be the same.

We have come to this. Take a $5000 year camera which will probably have a working life of say 3 years. Our past data suggests that such an asset will only be used max 3 days in seven over its working life. (in fact, if over 2.6 days usage average over a quarter we start finding that we “run short” with likes of the 1DX, D5, A9 due to most sports use being weekends: dual purpose landscape/wedding/studio gear about 3.0-3.6).

So, the max use of the asset in days will be 3y X 50w x 3uses or 150 days. If we assume that is residual value at the end of life is 10% the daily depreciation allowance is $5000 less 10% residual ($500) divided by 450 day life =~$10 per use day. This assumes 2000 average shots per day. This works reasonably well as most of our camera gear does about 300k – 400K shots over life. In the past we have added a 10% weighting per 1000 shots per day over 2000 shots because it’s shots that wear the thing out.

We run similar assumptions and calculations for lenses flashes etc. I agree it all sounds a bit complicated, but we have automated it using our gear logs when gear in signed in and out of our gear library. The cals are held in the computer so all the photographers has to do at gear check in is enter their user ID, the asset number, the job number and shots and it all done and we have numbers to work with. The data has other uses too as you can imagine – such as quoting.

To give a couple of practical examples from the last week. Saturdays wedding, I did on a 12 hr 1 photographer price of $2500. The photographic gear allowance was $118 for the day.(4.7%) (The post processing gear cost is separate). The same day two photographers and an assistant did a prem package for $7,500 but because for most of the day one photographer (largely) worked short (24-70mm) and the other long (70-200mm) with they did not have double the equipment I did (ie only one 70-200mm, two 24-70mm, one 35mm one 85mm etc) the gear allowance was $192 for the day. (2.6%). Back of envelope says if we were to move to a NZD$8000 R5 and a full kit of RF lenses at around NZ$4000 a pop these above figures would more than double or treble as the DSLR and EF (and other brand equivalents) start to depreciate rapidly in the face of the new mounts – and that does include extra insurance costs. Certainly a price increase for our work is currently out of the question and more likely margins will take a hammering as the pandemic will see less cash about – especially in the private commercial photography sector of portraiture, weddings, anniversaries and the like. Its 1987 and 2006 all over again but worse with cellphones now in the hands of one and all. Over the 6 weeks of the local lockdown work is 3% of last years.

Given I have had over 50 camera bodies and over 210 lenses in the photographers library (and another 30 odd cheaper APC cameras + lenses for our photo school SL100d/200d equivalents ) at the peak of our work 10 years ago we had to do something to work out the cost of the gear upkeep, have a sound basis for quoting etc.

Long winded but hopefully give some insights

Monty

winded....