I shoot 20 weddings/year and I TOO have the bookkeeping to show that using mostly digital is a lot cheaper then using film.
SilverGlow given your comments here and elsewhere I'm assuming you do your own digital post-propcessing and I ask these questions based on my own experience and the experience of pros around me for the last few years.
I don't want you to give me a real number here either, I just want to know if you can say; "I could hire well qualified people to do every aspect of my job, they would be happy, and I would still make a reasonable profit on the money I invest in my photography business."
If you can honestly say "Yes" to this you are doing okay. You or anyone who can't say yes probably needs to change their business plan or find a different way to pay the mortgage.
So onward, a while ago my peer group asked this about a typical wedding:
How many hours do you spend in; selling the job, advertising/marketing/networking, customer service, job prep, driving, setup, shooting, tear down, downloading, sorting, weeding out the trash, working up proofs, making slide shows, and all that jazz?
And
What is my net hourly rate for all this work?
All of the people around me, and even myself at that point, were shooting digital and doing their/our own post.
The consensus answer in my group was "No I could not hire somebody to replace myself. Nobody with reasonable skills would work for my hourly rate."
The only guys that were making a reasonable rates were the shoot and burn guys, the rest of us were giving lots of time away cheap. Sad but true.
Our net real hourly rates sucked and for all of us it was post-processing that was really killing our averages. Simply put, we figured out that we were not charging appropriately for post.
That's not sustainable in a business sense. It's okay for an individual to make the decision about his family snaps that his time has no reimbursable value, but it's not workable in business.
In terms of real cash, yes we were taking more in gross $ than the "shoot and burn with no edit" guys, but in terms of earning cash for time spent we were not paid near as well; working at a fast food chain was starting to look more profitable than doing post-processing and selling albums.
Film or digital makes no difference here, not charging appropriately for work done is just bad business.
So I did the math for my own business and if I kept my package rates the same and farmed out ALL my post, my hourly rate went up, a lot. That still didn't make me super lucrative but it did teach me a heck of a lesson.
Don't give away my time. This was purely a digital decision at that point.
Okay, the intent of this thread is/was supporting film in 2009.
So over the next year, the users on this site have the opportunity to demonstrate to the major brands that film makes business sense...so just like I intend to, make a New Year resolution to work out what you can afford and give your favourite brands a big order for 2009, and remind them that we are out here if they need us, because we definitely need them.
I like film as a medium, I want film to survive, I want a business model that supports film.
The "pay as I go business model" of sending film to the lab isn't a problem for me because I know I need to charge realistically for every part of a job and I am not going to do my own post (film or digital) unless I can get what real pro's get for similar work.
The digital pro-labs I've used get a $1 a frame to color correct digital files and they get $60 to $72 per hour for PS work. A PS guy working from home might be able to charge 66 cents a frame and $40 to $50 an hour profitably. If I'm paying less than that I have to manage the work more myself and it becomes a value trade off.
Why should I take less than market rates for equal work and skill?
When I am honest with myself and apply real market rates to every single second of my work and charge appropriately for everything I provide the customer, whether sub-contracted or done in house, digital loses any cost advantage for me.
Like 2F/2F says:
Good photography and good business skills make business sense. Everything else is secondary.
With regard to profitability, Professional Photographers of America publishes norms for business costs in wedding and portrait photography. As I remember the numbers, Costs of Goods sold, (COG) for "profitable" digital photography businesses runs about 20-25% of the sale and depreciation runs about 8-12%. For film based businesses, COG is about 30-35% and depreciation about 1-2%. Do the math, there is no real difference in the long run. This is a yearly survey of thousands of businesses.
Since, in the grand scheme of things, there really isn't any cost difference, the choice of whether or not to use film for me comes down to answering one question "How do I want to make my art?"
If I answer "Film", I'm done.
Film is more fun for me, Film allows me to do virtually all my creative work at the camera. I can control: how much grain (i.e. Pan F or Tri X pushed to 3200), what Color palette will come out (i.e. Velvia, Provia, or Astia), the DOF, crop, under/over exposure for effect, filters, etc... Whatever choice I make, I know I'm in control, the chemicals don't care and the labs I use won't try to fix my work like Adobe's presets do, unless I tell them to and I don't even have to own a computer or any software.
I leave the shoot and drop the film at the lab, at that point I know that I'm done with my job as photographer. It's time to go earn a commission as a sales person, take an order, and I'm done again once it's off to the printer.
By budgeting for and expecting to pay market rates for every part of my business I can afford to pay for a true craftspeople to print and process my work. My quality and profits can be better because I can use truly skilled people to do work that I'm only passable at, like marketing and sales.
I'm willing to commit to build my business on film based work because A vs. D doesn't matter to profitability and I don't give a rats ass about keeping up with the digital rat race.