Digital BW, The Print

Mark Hahn writes:

> Dang!  By my estimate that's about 6000 photos!  Hope you were 
> traveling alone... 'cuz it's hard to imagine that you were actually 
> able to do anyting else...

Hmm ... $2000 would pay for film and development of about 4000 shots in
my case, in the most expensive scenario (Provia 100F). That's about 7.5
rolls a day at 36 exposures each on a two-week trip, or roughly the
number I go through during 8-12 hours of event photography. If it takes
two minutes to decide what to do with each photo, that's over three
weeks of full-time (8 hours a day, 40-hour weeks) photo sorting just to
pick which ones to keep. For the smallest digital files, that's 7 CD-Rs
of archiving; for film shots, that would be about 62 CDs (a week of
non-stop CD burning at the very least).

None of this even addresses the cost of prints (which is the same for
both digital and film).

No matter how you look at it, that's a tremendous number of photos to
take.

As implied above, I shoot the most when I'm being paid for it.  During
an 8-12 hour shift, I'll go through about 7-8 rolls of 36 exposures.
That's about $150 of film and processing, depending on where I go, but
it's only necessary to sell a few to recover the cost.  Under just about
all other circumstances, I shoot far less.  Indeed, even for paying
jobs, I shoot a lot less if I can--not to save film, but just because
the sorting of the finished photos is so time-consuming.  You have to
look at each photo and decide what to do with it; if you decide to keep
it, it usually has to be adjusted, too, and then it must be archived and
recorded.  The only way to avoid that is to throw a lot of photos
away--and if you're throwing a lot away, why are you shooting it?