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profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan · 7 years ago

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Cost Evaluation

For the cost evaluation we have to look at how much it would cost us to produce work if we weren’t given things like camera hire and printing at university for our chosen career path.

As my chosen career path is to work for a music magazine producing live music photography, I would want to use a good camera, and the one that I have at the moment isn’t the best. However I wouldn’t want to buy a camera as it would be a waste of money, as new cameras come out every year - every two years and there would be no point paying out a lot of money for the best camera when within the next two years there could be a better camera. Additionally as there are different venues that are involved when photographing live music there would be no point in buying a lens that you would only use once or twice, so it would be best to look at hiring equipment for music photography.

If I worked for a music magazine and wasn’t at university I could get a variety of different venues/festivals that they could want me to work, so I would need a variety of different lenses. Additionally, I need to accommodate the low lighting conditions that I face when photographing.

As I have only really photographed with a 50mm and the occasional other lens I decided to ask the other photographers who work for Distorted Sound Magazine what they shoot with:

The main consensus of the best overarching music photography lens was a 24-70mm f2.8 so I am wanting to try this lens out to see what the outcome is.

If I was to shoot at a festival the equipment hire would be as follows:

From calumet, the cost of renting the Canon 5DSr body is £95 a day, and a typical festival is Thursday - Monday, which would be £95 x 5 which would come to £475 just for the body.

A good zoom lens suitable for festivals is the 70-200mm f/2.8 as it enables you to shoot up close on smaller stages and also offers a large zoom for the larger stages.

The daily rental price is £35 per day, and as a festival is usually 5 days long it would be £35 x 5 = £175

So it would cost all together, £650 for rental of a canon 5DSr body and the Canon 70-200mm lens for 5 days. This would be ridiculously expensive to rent as you probably wouldn’t be getting paid that by the magazine you were working for.

For a normal gig, which is usually of an evening or an all dayer event would only involve renting the equipment for a day, so if I was to use the Canon DSr again, that would be £95 x 1 = £95.

The cost of hiring the 24-70mm lens for the day is £35, so adding the cost of the lens and the body it would be £130 just for the cost of hiring, which again the magazine you work for probably wont be paying you.

However, from ‘hireacamera’ they are offering the Canon 5DSr for £84 a day, so for the festival it would cost £425 just for the body of the camera.

The 70-200mm lens is only £1 less a day than Calumet, at £34 for the 5 days it would come to £170 for the lens.

So overall it would come to £595 for the camera body and the lens for 5 days.

If it was for a one of gig the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens would cost £34 a day meaning that it would cost £118 for the body and the lens for just a day.

Hireacamera is a lot cheaper overall than Calumet. I never realised how much it costs to hire equipment, and being a student I don’t think I would have been able to complete my degree if I wasn’t able to borrow cameras/lenses.

If I was to buy the lenses on their own, from brand new on the Canon website the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens is £1,911.99

Additionally the 70-200mm lense is £1337.99 on Canon’s website.

For the line of work I am wanting to go into I wouldn’t have to print anything to complete my job as you usually send your editor the images for the gig you have shot and then they input it into the magazine.

On the website there wasn’t an option to buy the Canon 5DSr, so the next best thing, the Canon 5D Mrk 3 costs £2299.99

So if I was to buy the camera, and both lenses the estimated cost would be £5,549.97, which is a lot of money, especially when you don’t have it. If I was to save up my student loan over the year I would only have £450 spare, which is ridiculous.

Portfolio Research

As I already have my portfolio box from last year I am just going to use that as I feel it is the most appropriate method of displaying my way, and seeing that neither Abi Barwell, or Marcus Maschwitz replied to my email I guess I will never know how professional photographers have their portfolio other than their website.

My-Folio

Remembering back to first year and one of the first guest speakers I experienced was My-Folio, and they specialise in unique alternative portfolios such as leather, bamboo and acrylic.

Leather:

For the leather option there are two different styles you can get, a ring bound option, and a hinged style.

The ringbound style is quite basic but is effective, and starts off at £75 just for a plain portfolio, for it monogrammed it starts off at £85.

The next style for the leather option is the hinged portfolio, which starts off at £95 and with the option of adding your name and logo. To add you name it would be another £25, and for the logo it would be an extra £50, which would end up coming to £170 for the portfolio, logo and name engraving.

I really like the hinged leather portfolio and I feel it would be appropriate to display my work in this, as my work is of live music, in the metal/rock genre, and that is usually associated with wearing leather, so it would link in with the leather portfolio. Additionally the metal hinges are quite profound on the portfolio which would link in with the metal community again.

As much as I would really like to have this portfolio to display my work in I don’t think I would be able to afford spending this amount of money on a portfolio. I would get the name engraving, so it would be £120 for what I want, which is money that I don’t have at my expenditure.

Their leather options are robust and good quality, especially with the hinged portfolios as they are adjustable as you can buy bigger hinges to fit more images in.

Bamboo:

The Bamboo option from My-Folio only comes as a hinged portfolio, as you wouldn’t be able to ringbind bamboo, and I feel that the metal hinge is quite distracting and contradicts the natural feel that the bamboo has.

I really quite like the bamboo option as it is really unique, and I have never thought about having a wooden portfolio. I feel that this portfolio would get you remembered as I don’t think many people would have a wooden portfolio. For the plain portfolio it starts off at £95, the name personalisation starts at £120, and then the logo personalisation starts off at £155. Although this is a nice portfolio I don’t think that it would suit my style of work, and would contradict the work that would be in it.

Acrylic:

The acrylic option that My-Folio offers only hinged styles, as again, you wouldn’t be able to ringbind acrylic. However, they do offer you the choice of three different colours, although quite similar, they offer black, white or grey acrylic. Despite the colours being quite mundane and similar, I feel like they don’t offer colour options as the black, white and grey options are the most professional for photography and would more likely result in you being employed rather than a colourful acrylic.

There is an option for personalisation of the acrylic portfolio, however it doesn’t say how much it would cost. Although there is a link on their website to see how much it would cost, it just redirects you back to the homepage.

When I was looking on their website I found that they offer a 10% discount for university students, which if I was to get the hinged leather portfolio with my name on it would cost £108 instead of the £120. Although there is a discount I still can’t afford spending £108.

Additionally they offer an option to order as a course for graduate shows, which could be useful for our degree show, they offer 20% off on orders for graduate shows.

When My-Folio came in for their talk they brought physical examples of their portfolios and they looked really good quality, which you would expect for the price they are charging.

Silverprint

I also remember us talking about Silverprint as an option to get our portfolio, they offer portfolio boxes, portfolio books, and something new that I haven’t seen before, Prat Kraftfolios.

Within the portfolio box category they offer a portfolio box, a print archival portfolio box, an archival portfolio box slipcase, a print box and an CDX archival box.

As I plan on printing A4 size for my photographs I will be looking at A4 sized portfolios, for the portfolio box it would be £19.70 for an A4 3.5cm deep box, and £20.75 for a 6.5cm deep box, obviously the deeper the box the more photographs you would be able to store in them. It only costs £1.05 more for double the depth so it would be beneficial if you had more prints, however if you didn’t really have a lot of prints then it could make your box look empty and would give off the wrong impression to potential clients.

Silverprint potfolio boxes use materials that are acid and chlorine free, which means that they won’t effect the quality of your prints which is good, as you wouldn’t want to go to an interview with a potential employer and get there and your prints be ruined.

For the archival portfolio box, they only offer one depth for A4. The box opens out into two trays which would be useful for showing prints and comparing prints.

For the print box, which differs from the portfolio box in the sense that it doesn’t open out, it is just a box to store prints. Additionally they only offer one depth for print boxes.

As the print box is fairly similar to the portfolio box, however it is £30 cheaper than the portfolio box, due to cheaper materials being used so this could effect the durability of the portfolio.

For the CDX box, I was unsure of what to expect mainly because I had never seen this before. Whilst researching it there wasn’t an option for A4, however they had a box of 10x12 inches, which is the closest to standard A4 size of 8.27 x 11.69

What I found out about the CDX boxes is that they aren’t meant for displaying as a portfolio, they are mainly used to store prints which wouldn’t be useful for displaying prints in to a potential employer, as the material is made out of boxboard, and would look fairly cheap.

Portfolio books are another option that Silverprint offers, with there being a few different types, a Permajet Snapshut portfolio, a prat leather portfolio, a prat modebook, prat pampa and a Silverprint Portfolio book.

For the Permajet snapshut portfolio they offer two types of A4 sized portfolios. One portrait, and one lanscape. As the majority of my images are portrait, I would go for the portrait option.

The good thing about this portfolio book is that it is glue free and wouldn’t impact on your prints, however I’m not sure how many prints this would hold. Although in the description it does mention that it could be used to store magazines which are usually pretty thick so I feel like you could store a lot of prints in this. Additionally I feel like this is quite a professional way to display your work, although I prefer the print box.

The next option for portfolio books is the Prat leather portfolio, this is similar to the My-Folio ringbound leather portfolio, however it is much more expensive.

This portfolio only offered one size, which is 9.5x12 inches, which isn’t A4 but is big enough to fit A4 prints in without there being too much excess. What I like about this portfolio is that when you are displaying prints in them there is a flap that covers where the prints attach to the portfolio and gives it an overall sleek appearance.

The next option that Silverprint offers is the Prat Modebook, they offer only one size, which is A4.

This portfolio book sounds quite good, a it has a spiral mechanism which is ideal for adding more sleeves or taking out sleeves. This portfolio would be good if you worked in different genres of photography as it would be easy to swap out the sleeves with different prints on them depending on the type of photography you was wanting to display. The book has the option to have 20 different prints in, as that is all that it can hold, and it comes with 10 sleeves which is good value.

Similarly to the Prat Modebook, Silverprint offers the Prat Pampa portfolio, however, unlike the Modebook, the Pampa only comes in 9.5x12 inches, which isn’t exactly A4, however it does give you some room spare.

The Pampa also comes with the spiral mechanism, which makes it easy to interchange prints, however it can only hold 15 prints. It is a leather bound portfolio and has an attractive closure point to ensure that the book doesn’t come open and then end up bending your prints which is good.

Finally, Silverprint has it’s own portfolio book, which offers 3 different styles, the Siena, Havana and Bali, all quite exotic names.

The Siena portfolio book has a padded leather cover, and similarly to the Prat leather portfolio, it has screws for you to add your prints in, and they are also covered by flaps which gives it an overall sleek finish. It also has the capacity to hold up to 25 sleeves which would be good for this project as we have to produce a portfolio of 15-20 images.

The next Silverprint portfolio book is the Havana, which is a vegan friendly version of the Siena portfolio book, as it has a matte faux leather finish. Additionally it has the same internal screw system as the Siena and the same sleeve capacity, but is a lot cheaper due to the faux leather.

Finally, the last of the Silverprint portfolio books is the Bali, which has a Buckram cover, which has more of a textile feel to it, similar to a print box, but as a book. This also has the same screw system as the Havana and Siene books, as well as being able to hold up to 25 sleeves.

One thing that I would have liked with Silverprint is the option to personalise the portfolio as I feel like that adds another dimension to your portfolio and would help you be remembered by potential employers/clients.

Overall, I would love to be able to have the My-Folio leather hinge portfolio or the Silverprint Havana portfolio book, however, I am just unable to afford any of these, so I will be sticking to my print box, as I feel it still suits the style of work that I am producing. If I were to have bought either of the portfolios it would have cost me £108 for the My-Folio hinged leather portfolio, and for the Silverprint Bali portfolio book would cost £80. Although it would be really nice to have either of these I simply can’t afford to spend that kind of money.

Portfolio Sleeves

London Graphics:

Despite buying some portfolio sleeves last year I can’t remember where I got them from, so I googled ‘Portfolio print sleeves’ and there was a website named London Graphics which looked promising, however upon closer inspection they aren’t the type that I’m looking for as these are more suited for ring binder portfolios, as they have the bit on the side with holes in so you can attach them to the rings.

However, upon closer inspection of their website I found that there was an option to get the style that I need. For a pack of 25 A4 sleeves it costs £4.75, which isn’t bad at all, and as our portfolio needs to be 15-20 images it has enough, and 5 spare in case I needed any more. What is good about these sleeves is the fact that they are resealable, which is good if you wanted to switch your prints around.

Additionally I found the exact same sleeves on Cass art for £4.95, which is a 20p difference, which isn’t much but it can add up. I think I will be opting for these, as there is a Cass art in Manchester that I will be able to collect these from to avoid paying for delivery.

Update: I went into the store and bought these sleeves, and I got the option to get student discount and the sleeves only ended up coming to £4.45 which isn’t bad considering I get 25 sleeves which equates to around 17p per sleeve.

On amazon, I found 100 of the print sleeves for £6.79, however the fact that they are so cheap, for so many is quite worrying as it seems too good to be true and wouldn’t want to order them and then they come and are really low quality, despite the fact that it says they are high quality.

On My-Folio’s website there is an option to buy sleeves, in packs of 10 costing £10 which equates to £1 per sleeve, and as our portfolio has to be 15-20 images I would have to buy two of these packs which would total £20, which is a bit expensive but I imagine they are high quality.

Silverprint’s sleeves cost £8.83 for a pack of 10, and again, I would have to get two packs due to the module requirements, so it would come to £17.66 for two packs, which again is expensive but as they are an art company you know that they will be of high quality.

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