well personally i don't think photography is really any cheaper.

Lenses are the same price
computers / extra hard drive space / internet : you didn't need them before.. but are offset by film
camera body: the prices are WAY higher.  You could buy a good SLR for $100 before digital.

i think what has done it is the internet and ease of selling.  Additionallly there is a lot larger market than there has been before because of the internet and cheap printing costs for churches / non profit groups and such.  in the 80's you didn't see too many cheapo color leaflets.

with film, you could buy an old SLR and get the exact same results as a new one.  You just hat to perhaps put in a little more time and knowledge when using it.  That is what i meant about the $100 camera.

Once you have a digital camera though, you still need hard drive space that gets contanstly used up, a $600 piece of software (photoshop) if you are going to get serious. Both your camera and computer get outdated so quickly that it is almost essential to upgrade at least once every 5 years.

Although i agree that digital is great and 'free' to take pictures and make stock images, I am not sure it is much cheaper in the end.

I agree and I would go so far as to say vastly cheaper for digital.

Photoshop, got it years before I started doing photography because I used it for digital art. Not a direct expense as I'd still have it and use it for other things but I'll give you that the last upgrade I paid for was a direct result of photography. On the other hand even if you use film most people would still scan and edit their photos digitally so the cost is the same for both film and digital.

Computer, just like Photoshop, not a direct cost of photography for me and I've never upgraded it because of photography. Photography just adds another use for it. Again though, it really is a wash because it would be used for both film and digital.

Camera, yes, a digital can be (and for me is) much more expensive than film. At least $1000 more.

Film, processing, and all the other stuff madelaide mentioned. That's where my savings is coming from. Completely overwhelms any savings on the body. Less than a year's worth of expense to cover the cost of the more expensive body.

The one savings not mentioned was time. I don't spend time doing things I don't want to do like dropping off and picking up film/slides/prints. I'm not printing and sorting a bunch of stuff I'll never look at. I'm not examining slides nor am I spending the time and money to get my negatives/slides scanned. And to top it all off there is the immediacy of digital. If I have an idea at midnight for a simple studio type shot it can be done and uploaded by 2 am and I still manage to get a reasonable amount of sleep. Can't put a dollar figure on the time aspect but it weighs the argument heavily toward digital.

So, especially in the long term, the digital side is way cheaper for me. Now if I did a different type of digital photography, say with a digital back for medium format or something like that where the back costs $20-30K on up I could start to buy the film is cheaper argument. But with digital SLRs and P&S, no, digital is vastly cheaper.

Okay, now the issue: is anyone making ANY money on ScanStock? And I mean ANY money. I don't like posting stats (maybe saying which sites are doing good and which aren't), but in this case I'll make an exception.

A year on, > 200 photos. 0 sales!

well avoiding numbers

I am making more on there than on canstock, if that says anything.

not much, but a little.

Yeah. Out of all earning agencies CS brings up the rear for me as well. I have now made more on LO...