Ehh, They're more expensive, but most of them come with IS.

I'd still rather shoot Nikon.

I don't see what's wrong with $100-300 I know about five 30 year old women with $5,000 cameras that would jump at the gig as long as it wasn't a full wedding commitment.

I think it's more about the gatekeeping.

Our wedding photographer gave us both RAWs and processed JPEGs

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ohhhh this pisses me off soooooo much. I decided to do family photos and specifically asked for the raws before I went into the shoot. They still gave me a hard time after the shoot to get the raws. They gave me a stripped down .dng without any camera settings. Ohhhh that pisses me off so much.

For the price of one shoot, you can buy someone's lightly used $5,000 kit on ebay. I've had a Canon I bought a decade ago that's still works great. Maybe got it for $250 or so IIRC.

I found a guy willing to chuck me RAWs for a lower price, still felt a bit ripped off. He shot 90% of the day on a walkabout zoom and the photos were nothing special.

shes probably rich or well off, of course she afford to this.

Ah, so that's why you're known as the cum farter, you were the sloppy seconds.

Wedding photographer is an interesting job. With a lot of jobs, people buy the minimum viable equipment they need to get the job done.

But, people who get into wedding photography seem to generally be people who are really into photography. Rather than a $5000 camera being the requirement for the job. The $5000 camera is a present you can justify getting yourself if the wedding photography game is going well.

It's not a tool that goes into the case and stays there until the next wedding. It's something to be used for the kinds of pictures that don't pay the bills but that you love taking: nature shots, architecture, abstract art, gritty realism, etc.

Exactly.

There is real skill involved in photography, and it takes real time even after being skilled. A 1-hour shoot in a new location still requires probably an hour of planning, maybe an hour or two of logistics, and maybe 2-3 hours of work after the fact to get the photos processed and distributed. And it's basically the opportunity cost that will eat up the entire day, because you can't double book the same sunset or other lighting conditions or whatever. There's seasonality, too, if you want specific seasonal conditions in the shot, if you want to book the Saturday that other clients want, etc.

That's before expenses like insurance, the amortized cost of the software and hardware (including the cameras and lenses and computer), web services for distribution of the files, etc.

It's fair to charge a full day's fair pay for a job like that, and that might mean wanting to charge something like $1000 for an experienced photographer, maybe $500 of which actually represents "profit" for the sole proprietor. But that only happens at that price if there are clients willing to pay that price.

For bigger jobs like parties or weddings, it gets a bit more involved, which is why a 2- or 3-shooter wedding job can cost several thousand, or even above $10k.

But for easy jobs like anything in a high volume studio where the lighting is already known, and there aren't any logistics involved, it should be much cheaper. It just all depends.

Partially, but it's the £5000 camera in combination with the additional kit a £5000 camera owner carries around with them, like putting a tripod bag and a spare lenses bag on the same shoulder.

Taxes, assistant fee, mileage, you own more than one lens and one cam body…no lol not even close. We haven’t even talked about post processing, delivery, rights, etc.