Pricing product photography

[Niels_Patrick]

Hi Forum,

I am writing a cost estimate at the moment.
My client is asking for 10.000 pictures in studio quality on location of his products.
Mainly small car spare parts. Finally retouched with clipping mask. Yes 10.000 
I charged him 250 Euros per picture for the last job with a smaler quantity. I know he will not pay this for the XXXL amount of pictures.

1. How do you calculate such an amount?
2. Calculate per Product? Per day?
3. Has anybody workflow experience in XXXL projects? I will shoot with 2 Nikon D800 / Profotos ...
4. Clipping mask - sending to China?

Maybe someone has tips - I go crazy. I am the fashion guy 

Greetings Niels Patrick

[Niels_Patrick]

nobody experience in XXXL quantity product photography? Like catalog shooting, spare parts ...

[MrSmith]

that could be 6-8months shooting if you do 30-40 shots a day
dont underestimate the time needed for just organising the product and keeping tabs on what has been shot.
i would start with working out how many you expect to shoot in 8hrs and then how much revenue you expect for that day.
i would certainly have a team of 2-4 people running 2-3 sets of small/medium/large sets as set changes are what bring the productivity down.

good luck and enjoy the holiday you take when you finish the job!

[Niels_Patrick]

Yeah - thinking of 2 studio setups at the moment to produce faster but still a nightmare to calculate everything right....

[uvl]

I once did a catalogue for a pen manufacturer. What takes longer is reflecting and translucent parts. I had a small box with some black and white strips where I could put in the pens for the shot. Lighting was just a softbox. All clipping masks (and shadows if needed) were done by hand in PS. Camera was a Rolleiflex with DB tethered on a Mac in another room. I could do about 20 shots per day with all PP but it was boring. Nowadays I would try to do the clipping mask with the help of my flash manufacturer. Take one shot with white background and black product for the mask and another shot with a well lit product. Elinchrome and Rimelite support this technique. I don't know about the others but they surely do as well.
I have no idea on current pricing but if the customer paid 250 Euro for smaller jobs you might ask for not less than 80 Euro per part. Usually the photos are the most expensive part of a catalogue.

Uwe 

PS: We are in the same area (Stadtprozelten). Drop me a PM or Email if you need my help.

[MrSmith]

"you might ask for not less than 80 Euro per part"

you could equally ask for 180 and the client would be happy with the discount for volume. why would you massively underquote?
 you would also get a volume discount for a clipping path which would be just a few dollars as the people set up to do this would want the work as the 10,000 items is a big chunk of business for them.

[uvl]

"you might ask for not less than 80 Euro per part"

you could equally ask for 180 and the client would be happy with the discount for volume. why would you massively underquote?
 you would also get a volume discount for a clipping path which would be just a few dollars as the people set up to do this would want the work as the 10,000 items is a big chunk of business for them.

You are right and the number is maybe to low. This has always been a problem with me ;-)

[Michael N. Meyer]

Niels, I used to work in house full time at a jewelry wholesaler; over 18 months I shot roughly 35,000 items for them. The other photographer that I worked with shot a similar number. In a given day, we would each shoot and retouch between 100 and 200 items. This was the daily routine. Images were used primarily for line sheets and custom B2B catalogs worked up for client meetings. The quality was good enough for consumer facing e-retail and probably would have been good enough for mid-end print catalogs.

What is your client's intended usage? Line sheets? Catalog?

How much can you make it into a step and repeat kind of lighting set-up and how automated can the retouching be?

[Niels_Patrick]

Wow - thanks all for the helpful feedback.

Images are for a B2B catalog - also online use.

I feel the volume discount has to be more than 50% in this case. 10.000 parts! But anyway maybe i am just confused by the factor x10.000.

@ Uwe - thank you for the technical advice. We have to test whats faster - maybe photoshop will be the winner.

@ Michael - lightning setup will be 90 % the same. Expect some XXL truck axle products. I will try to shoot everything clean from the beginning: perfect background lightning will hopefully help in photoshop by auto-select the clipping mask.

... we will see. I keep you guy updated. Thank you all for your help.



Aloha Niels

[Iluvmycam]

Good for you!

You do it per day or weekly fee.

[egor]

What we do is charge by day and in some cases lump-sum.

If I understand correctly you have 10,000 parts masked against transparent or white. Depending on size and complexity of objects to be shot, and client budget and end-use needs...

If the parts are small, tabletop size, and simple metal and If I only dedicated two shoot stations, + 2 operators I would estimate about 25-40 work days.
Then there is the matter of clip paths (China), or Masking can be done at time of shoot using reticular screen backgrounds and a simple ring flash. retouch post and organization which would take an additional 10-15 days

I would probably dedicate more resources than that to such a job to get it through the studio faster and save client money.
I would arrange for delivery via secure ftp and establish a standardized naming convention for each item (***This is critical! probably a combination of SKU# + 1st five letters of common name/description + some in-house designate. The rest in metadata field for SEO)
There are many more variables to consider but thats probably a good approximation.

We shoot jobs of that size of grocery store packaging, medical instruments parts, footwear, jewelry, and accessories every year. Its our bread and butter. (We actually shoot bread and butter too! You wouldn't believe how many variations there are!

Price per part, in the end, probably around $25-$70 USD/part shot. But it could be cheaper or more expensive depending on size, location shooting expenses, complexity, post One of my favorite quotes: "Price, Quality, Speed...pick two of those"