[markbarendt]

You make it to sound like film photography is making a come back and driving out all those wedding photographers shooting with their 20mp+ full frame camera. The reality is the opposite. This is the first time I heard about the 1k wedding market is shrinking. With today's economy, 1k for most couples for wedding photography can be too much. Don't believe me? Go look up Criag List for the $500 wedding photographers. Of course, if your typical clients are making more than 6 figure annual incomes, you would probably don't care too much about the normal folks. To generalize your unusual experiences to the general photography market is just wrong. Just out of touch with the reality.

Sorry TooManyShots, PMK-25 is right, you are missing the point.

It's not that anybody doesn't care about the normal people and it is fine to be charitable but in business one must make a profit. $500 weddings are charity work with free a dinner, even $1000 weddings can't support a business, you simply can't do enough of them to pay the bills and yourself a living wage. (There simply aren't enough weekends in a year.)

I don't think anybody is suggesting that film is displacing digital. What I might suggest though is that wedding shooters chasing the latest, greatest, biggest, and baddest (film or otherwise) are probably spending way too much on their tools and that is always a bad business decision.

Profession Photographers of America puts out info on the norms of the industry in terms of cost and whole bunches of other great things in support of pros. I'd suggest that you pony up and join PPA if you want a real idea of what works and what doesn't.

http://www.ppa.com/