A further thought.
As well as day rental there is lease purchase (which is what I did)
Effectively borrowing the money
In the UK this has tax advantages and means you dont have to come up with the whole sum
What I woudnt do is buy cheap because you dont have the lump sum available
S
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Every project has a bottom line. You may not be privledged to it, or you may not think of it that way, but regardless, when you client walks into thier client, rarely if ever do they say, well photography fees are $4, camera rentals are $6, models and $3, studio rental is $2 so the total is $15. They just say, it's $15 bucks for the day. (I'm quoting editorial rates here )
Obviously the industry, especially on the coasts has moved into the rent as you go system. In manhattan just a 10x10 storage space is $487 a month, so factor in a real studio of even 1,500 sq. ft. and you'll have some idea of where the numbers are going. (This also holds true for London, Paris, LA and to some extent Miami).
It really depends on your business model and how you want to invest in your business.
I own all of my equipment and keep mostly duplicates in two cities, (soon to be 3) and the only thing I move around from studo to studio is cameras (a lot of cameras) and a few laptops.
What this allows me is to work the numbers if I must, (see my bottom line description), because if you are renting the only numbers you can move are your own creative fees and the costs of production and if production costs are fixed and the project get's tight, the photographer is going to take the hit a lot faster than the rental studio or company.
There is also a matter of investment. You may think your client doesn't notice or care who owns or maintains their own equipment or studios but they damn well notice when it stops working or they are uncomfortable, or the estimate goes up by 45% because you were hit with overtime charges.
I notice when renting a 12x rag for 4 days costs me more than buying two of them, or that the pro 7's I rented came in at $5,000 and I spent all of the time bleeding heads with the power on low, when I could buy and own acutes for virtually the same weekly rental as the 7s.
I work in a lot of markets and do a wide variety of work and I can promise you, to a client, a genre, a city, everybody talks money and wants to know how they can get as much as possible for the budget they're handed.
In regards to medium format, everyone talks costs and renting medium format back, cameras, lenses, computers and backups in just about any city in the world adds another $2,000 a day to the estimate.
Running off that $2,000 a day number, it doesn't take long for me to recoup a $50 to $60k investment in cameras and computers.
As far as digital techs there are some very good ones that can make your life easier but on the other hand if you own your own cameras, backs and computers, you can almost run the day tech free. If you look at that video I posted most of the digital tech work in C-1 was done before hand, by setting up shoot folders the day before, so once the day starts, other than make some checks for look and focus (which I have to do anyway), the computer and camera virtually run themselves, (including backups).
There is something to be said about actually knowing your own equipment front to back.
We all talk and sometimes bemoan the fact that this stuff changes every few years and the investment that requires and though I may be a throwback on using Contax and backs like a P21 and and P30, my investment is lightweight in comparision to going to the newest and the largest cameras and backs .
I've never had a client complain there is not enough detail or resolution, or the fact that my Contax are not made anymore, in fact the few comments I get about the digital process is that it went smooth in comparision to their previous project.
I'm not different than anyone else and making a large purchase puts a lump in my throat, then again I've rarely made a large purchase that didn't pay off in the end.
JR