Should film and digital be equal?

[77streetvan]

I've been thinking of this for awhile and thought I'd ask it here to see what others thought. Should the price of a film print be the same as a digital print? If so, why?

 

[df cardwell]

How you made the picture is irrelevant. If it is a good picture, it is a good picture.

How much you may charge for a good picture depends on your market, and how your worth is perceived.

 

[dpurdy]

There are people doing digital work very cheaply. There are digital services on line that will make prints from files sent on line for very little money. The industry is set up so you can shoot however many digital images you need and then make them available to the client on line with a service that takes care of all the printing, delivery and payment and then pays the photographer. It is not at the same quality of a darkroom print from film or even a custom ink jet print from your computer room but it is good enough for the masses of people with no education in quality or with more interest in bottom line than any other factor. As a film photographer you can't compete with that. So, relative to that, film photography has to be more expensive than digital. Look at the senior portrait business, it used to be standard at several hundred dollars or even thousand dollars for the mega multi pose package when it was film. Now it is easy to find a senior portrait photographer to shoot all you want for 150 or 200 dollars and the prints are cheap.

 

[RMP-NikonPro]

"How you made the picture is irrelevant. If it is a good picture, it is a good picture."
So True!!

"Should the price of a film print be the same as a digital print? If so, why?"
The Same!! You are selling the service you provide Not the Product!!

:munch:

 

[thedancefloor]

Somehow, I think that the film print should sell for more. Because: 1) It's real in a few ways that a digital print is not. Thus it's actual art. 2) It has the potential to look exponentially better. 3) It has a higher overhead.

But... all these things considered, a high end digital workflow isn't exactly quick or easy. And it shouldn't be. So then the digital print can end up costing just as much.