J.D. I currently continue to shoot the vast majority of my work using standard definition on a pair of Canon XL1 and a Canon GL2. For all my productions, even when I am shooting direct to hard drive and using tape for backup, I have used Sony Premium MiniDV. When I have gone with another brand, back in the early days of my MiniDV acquisition, I ran into head clog problems and stuff. So, after getting the heads replaced in BOTH XL1 cameras twice and the complete drive path assemply replaced in one of them once, I NEVER allow myself to be tempted to change tape type or brand again. I will recycle a one-time or twice used Sony before taking the chance. Once bitten, and all that...
If I were to go with a unit that uses the HD rated tape I would simply factor in the tape stock costs. For nearly all my commercial jobs tape stock fees is a line item and payable over and above other charges. I treat it like sales tax, it is a cost carried the client over and above my service and production fees.
I have still not been sold off the HMC150 Panasonic SDHC cameras as a early/late fall 2009 acqusition (will need a pair) so tape soon, for me, will not be an issue.
Gads, I highjacked my own thread :-)
Back on topic: What I wanted to do with this thread essentially was bring to mind that many things in the line of our work, especially in wedding production, are treated as inconsequential and not factored into the equation when we want to actually get a 99-percent accurate picture of what it takes to produce an average wedding. I didn't go into detail with the many things that we purchase and use in conjunction with our wedding production, or lump it into a misc category, but I probably should have because I suspect actual production costs is closer to $2K than even I care to accept.
On another forum a guy pointed out that he (admittedly) underpays college students or other desperate individuals, carries NO insurance (seriously taking chances here, especially when hiring out or outsourcing work - not to mention the potential for Uncle Sam considering these people employees rather than contract labor - whole nother issue...) and that he believes a person doing all the work himself (acqusition AND editing) is out more than hiring people on the cheap to shoot and/or edit. I can't seriously wrap my head around that concept. But, regardless, it remains a COST and cannot be left out of the equation.
Another guy pointed out that regardless of the "costs" I didn't include "market" in my assessment, but I responded that "what the market will bear, spend or what it's perceived value is) isn't elemental to factoring THE COST of doing a wedding production. Basing pricing on "what the market will bear" is something a LOT of us do, myself included, but that doesn't mean we're doing it right where expenses, income and profit come together. Market attitude isn't a factor in calculating hard costs of production.
Consequently, many of us do simply set pricing that we feel is competitive, do MORE work than it pays for, and go on about our happy ways with no regard to the fact that if we were to depend on doing this day in and day out for a living we would soon run out of money, go out of business and start looking for the employment line again. Those of us, and I started there as well, who have regular employment can subsidize our wedding (or other) production side-line business to a degree, but sooner or later, if we're not making a concerted and focused effort to at least break even or make a profit, we're going to overwhelm our financial resources no matter the money we have coming in.
I'm going to get stupid here, but really think about this: If you ONLY pour water OUT of the jar and never replinish the levels it will eventually go empty; likewise, if you pour out more than you replace, ditto; AND, if you add water from other jars without renewing the sources for ANY of them, they will all eventually run dry. Same with expending MORE than you bring in to produce wedding, or any other, videos.
