New Studio Part 6: Vendors - DPChallenge Forums

03/23/2005 03:05:45 PM · #1

I promised I'd try to write about what I'm learning as I go from DPC flunkie to studio owner. This is part 6 in the series.

New Studio Part 1: Starting Out
New Studio Part 2: Organization
New Studio Part 3: Plotting a Course
New Studio Part 4: Financing
New Studio Part 5: Setting Up the Shop, Part 1
New Studio Part 5: Setting Up the Shop, Part 2
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No fancy quote or humorous anecdote could possibly make vendor shopping any more fun. However, I strongly urge you to read this before doing hours and sometimes weeks of research yourself. Choosing good vendors can save you a lot of money and frustration.

Gear and Camera Supplies
The first type of vendors you will need are are gear and camera supply retailers. If you are opening a photography studio, we will assume you know at least a few places to buy some equipement. Here are a few we've used with success as well:

1) B&H Photo - cameras, lenses, lighting, tripods, etc. Reputable dealer with a huge list of items. Average prices.
2) Adorama - A bit cheaper than B&H with good quality as well. Large selection and they even do their own printing (mixed results). Albums are the best buy here!
3) Buydig - Mostly cameras and lenses at often lower than B&H prices (some lenses are much higher here, so shop around). Very good and good reputation. If you find a dealer price lower than on Buydig, be careful that it's not a scam.
4) Ebay - buyers can find great deals with honest sellers if they try hard and look carefully. Read auctions very carefully and check seller ratings. With all those warnings out of the way, we bought two camera bodies, 2 lenses, CF cards, and much more on Ebay with not one problem thus far.
5) Buy and sell forums - DPC's hardware forum, FredMiranda and The Photo Forum all have buy and sell forums. Photographers are usually pretty snobby about their equipment, and tend to upgrade frequently - use that to your advantage. What is subpar for one photographer may be exactly what you need, especially early on.

There are 1000s of legit retailers around and you should be able to find someone good online. We steer away from local retailers as they usually charge a bit more and use more high pressure sales tactics and have less actually in stock when you get there.

Office Supplies
The second group of vendors you will deal with are office supply stores. We looked at several online places, but for desk, chairs, notebooks, folders, etc, you should stick with Staples, Office Max and the like.

The only exception to this rule is documents. When it comes to brochures, flyers, postcards, and letterhead, Office Max and Staples as well as Kinkos are sub-par. They cannot fold brochures except on normal paper stock and they are super expensive compared to online places. Here are a few suggestions for your ad materials and documents:

1) Vista Prints - home of the free business cards! Can't be beat to get 250 free business cards. Still a real value when you get their better (paid) products. Reasonable prices and good customer service.
2) Got Print - A lot of the pro studios I know swear by Got Print. Good prices and excellent product. Request a sample pack and see.
3) Overnight Prints - best quality on the top end and worst customer service. Similar prices to the above. The sample here was better than the product, but still a viable option.

Printing Lab
Probably the most important vendor you will work with is your printing lab. Generally you will use one lab for all of your needs. The most important factors in choosing a lab are color, consistency and speed of delivery. Some labs do not provide a storefront and you take all orders yourself. Others are ONLY a storefront and you pick the lab you want for order fulfillment. Some are both. Here are the top choices:

Lab ONLY, no storefront
1) Millers - pro quality, pro service, pro price.
2) WHCC - lots of options and pro work.
3) Winkflash - seriously super cheap and excellent prints. Worth doing all 4x6's here even if you use someone else for everything else.

Storefront ONLY, no lab
1) Photoreflect - a surprising number of pro photographers use PR, but few who aren't using it understand it. You upload, they take the orders, and a 3rd party lab prints them. You pick the lab.
2) Store/shopping cart software - lots of work for something like OS Commerce with little return on time and money.

Storefront AND lab
1) Pictage - most well known & expensive of this class. Superior quality, album design online, and top class products. A bit expensive for most, but worth the money for the top enders.
2) DPC Prints - why not? DPCP2 is going to be significantly improved for events. Hang in and see. Custom storefronts highlight the most important changes.
3) Smugmug - More expensive than DPCP but ready to go now. Both use EZprints so quality is consistent with what you're used to. Consider waiting for DPCP2 for the price, though.

Albums
Ah, albums. Save yourself the trouble and just let a scream go now. Albums are by-FAR the most difficult product to purchase. They are the staple of your packages and the most important thing you hand to clients. There are an unbelievable amount of choices. We use three types of albums for weddings, but you may think of 3 totally different types. Here is our experience:

1) Proof albums - wedding proofs generally come in 4x5, 4x6 and 5x5 sizes. Albums are available in 3 ring binders, glue bound, pin bound and library bound styles. Personally, binders look cheap to me. A thick, library bound proof album adds value to your package - we get them from Ritz and it's called the Malden album - they are superb!

2) Parent albums and wedding albums - choices, choices. Prints or mounted magazine style albums? Book board or Smyth Sewn bindings? Here are some GOOD choices:

--Graphistudio -the best magazine style albums. Designed in Italy - they are very expensive but high end brides want them.
--Leather Craftsman - superior products in either magazine or traditional styles. Moderately expensive.
--CMYK books - less expensive magazine albums with great quality. Many sizes available and we use the 10x10" and the 7x7" albums.
--Asuka books - new, untested but wow. These guys look fantastic - news out of WPPI is that they are the leader in low price, excellent quality magazine albums.
--Adorama sells a perfect 8x10 traditional album. It's black, cream or wine colored with a leatherette cover. Super deal and very very very nice.
--MyPublisher - the 12x18 MyPublisher album blows clients away. The size is just unreal and the quality is satisfactory. The 6x8 softcover is a little less than we'd like, but the hardcover books are nice!

Other album manufacturers include Queensbury, La Vie, Album X, Art Leather, Bon Match and the list goes on and on...it's fairly endless.

Suppliers and vendors often have sales the way other stores do. Try to plan your purchases with that in mind as well.

Please add your vendor recommendations. Tell us as much as you can about the vendor, including a link where possible.

Thanks and til next time,
Matt

Message edited by author 2005-03-27 13:30:27.

Gordon

RIM BlackBerry Curve

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

03/23/2005 04:18:33 PM · #2

Originally posted by mavrik:

2) DPC Prints - why not? DPCP2 is going to be significantly improved for events. Hang in and see. Custom storefronts highlight the most important changes.

Is anything happening with that ? I signed an NDA about a year ago and have heard nothing since. I didn't realise it was an agreement not to disclose anything to me...

Btw - have you tried/ looked at //www.printroom.com ?

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6

03/23/2005 05:56:20 PM · #3

Originally posted by Gordon:

I haven't seen print room - I'll definitely check it out.

As far as DPCP2, if I knew anything, I couldn't really say it. lol All I DO know is that it's moving forward, and D&L would LIKE it done asap of course. I know that the improvements are going to be worth it, but I recommend the others in case people need them now, tomorrow or yesterday. :) I'm trying my best to wait for DPCP2, but I need to talk to D&L soon.

M

loz1

Canon EOS-450D Rebel XSi

03/23/2005 07:44:01 PM · #4

Do online printing stores compare in price to physical sites? Although you would then have to do all of the postage and packaging yourself, which could become messy when you are doing several orders, with hundreds of different photos.

Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di for Canon

03/23/2005 09:27:21 PM · #5

Winkflash is .19 for 4x6 and Walmart is like .30. Usually you can find better deals and better printers online - though it depends where you live (if Millers is down the road from you, you aren't using WHCC).

We have Syracuse Color Labs - but super expensive comparatively.

Canon EOS-20D

03/23/2005 09:37:33 PM · #6

Walmart is .19. Sam's Club is .17.