16 ms·

The short of it is that there’s no money in photography, compared to videography. Movies routinely have 8 or 9 digit budgets, with teams of hundreds of people

by gyomu 6mo ago

The short of it is that there’s no money in photography, compared to videography. Movies routinely have 8 or 9 digit budgets, with teams of hundreds of people who have to collaborate to make footage coming from dozens of different cameras look seamless and consistent. Meanwhile, $1M would be an insane budget for a photo shoot. You can see this in the actual skills of people working in the field as well. Anyone working in video has a solid understanding of the technical underpinnings of their craft. On the other hand, it’s not uncommon for working photographers to not understand some really basic stuff about color science/data formats/etc.

mastermage 6mo ago
Counterpoint most of the Movies budgets is usualy spent on the actors and on the filming. Not on the editing team. There is also copious amounts of money in photography Alot of advertising is still static images and print.
- atoav 6mo ago
  Yes, but if the budget of the whole thing is high(er) they don't tend to cheap out on details that could mske or break it. Or phrased differently: If your shoot codts a million a day it doesn't matter if your camera costs 400 bucks a day or 40. In fact they may ask you whether you really wanna go with the 40-buck camera.
  - mastermage 6mo ago
    > Yes, but if the budget of the whole thing is high(er) they don't tend to cheap out on details that could mske or break it. The evidence does not point to this. There have been copious amounts of movies that hired the Rock and then made the worst CGI in the history of Cinema.
d3vnull 6mo ago
But there's a couple orders of magnitude more photo shoots than movies and since once you write software once, you can copy it for free, investing in creating photo editing software still makes sense.
hobofan 6mo ago
> Meanwhile, $1M would be an insane budget for a photo shoot. Photo shoots for automotive advertising regularly are around that pricepoint.
dbspin 6mo ago
Fundamental misunderstanding of the market dynamics here. There are at least an order of magnitude more people making a professional salary as photographers (ie.: enough to justify a software purchase) than professional videographers. Outside of film, videographers are generally paid a day rate about half as high as photographers, with enormously higher equipment costs. Film - hollywood, streaming, TV etc, combined actually employ a relatively small number of people. Sure there's enormously more budget for any given TV show than say a wedding photoshoot, but think about how many people get married, how many corporate photo sessions there are etc etc. Basically by conflating videography and cinematography you've obscured the issue. Source - I'm a videographer that also works as a cinematographer / director on smaller budget projects. Also on anything bigger than a very low budget short, it's editors and post people who are using the editing software not the videographers / camera operators / DOP. Bare in mind DaVinci does not own the film industry. It's very much still Avid's game, with Nuke for colour, and a small percentage of Adobe Suite.
- motoxpro 6mo ago
  100% agree. Photo is a much muuuch bigger market.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- PaulHoule 6mo ago
  As a semi-pro photographer I look at the $295 pricing and think that is a very reasonable price for something that could help my photos look like my photos. I bought DxO PhotoLab for $235 and color grade with it all the time. Right now I use LUTs that other people made and have been thinking I’d like to learn to be more systematic and make my own. I don’t really do video but I have in the past so a video editor coming in a box sweetens the deal in the same sense that Adobe CC comes with, say, Premiere, which I use just occasionally. I can totally shoot video with my Sony and there is definitely a lot of demand for it on the internet these days. I also know Divinchi resolve is a product that many people in film/video are enthusiastic for and that counts too.
  - 6mo ago
Keyframe 6mo ago
those big productions are production design and above the line heavy. Most people on shoots are paid well. However, if you look at the other side of the coin, hardware and software supporting the industry, it's actually "laughable". ARRI which is the biggest name in the game on shoots is ~$1b, RED was sold of for $85m, BMD could fetch as high as $3b, Autodesk's Media & Entertainment is <%5 of its revenue which would, if it were standalone, also bring it to around $1b valuation. Avid the same at ~$1.5, Grass Valley the same ~$1b-1.5, Sony's ET&S is hard to gauge since it includes everything, but an estimate is ~$1.5b, Maxon ~$1.5, all of Nikon $4b, Canon's camera division ~$15b... and then you have Adobe which has ~%65 of its revenue coming from Creative segment ($14-15b over $23.77 for 2025), which would put it at ~$70b - $100b valuation if it were standalone (5x-7x revenue). That's how big Adobe is compared to literally everything else. Its creative division is 3x-4x more than the entire industry combined. You do have new contenders now with Epic (~$22b), Canva ($26b), Figma ($20b), but I'm not convinced.. in certain segments for sure, but still not confident based on stock performance or revenue.
- Forgeties79 6mo ago
  Adobe may be a big dog but it hasn’t insulated them from black magic eating more and more of their NLE market share with every passing year. BMD went from making a (niche for everyone else) Hollywood color tool to a full blown NLE with almost 20% of the market share in less than a decade. Not to mention a very respectable camera line. I remember hearing the phrase “round tripping through resolve” for years as some sort of magical incantation only somebody in post production understood. Now resolve is fighting for Lightroom’s space within a full NLE. That’s something!
  - Keyframe 6mo ago
    Yeah, BMD has a fighting chance. It's interesting how they got there (software-wise). They bought cutting-edge and expensive tools and kind of gave them away for free-ish. Hardware sales gave them a chest to do it with, and small market for those niche tools allowed them to buy it for peanuts. It's Autodesk's playbook on M&A but definitely different strategy in capturing the market. Even Apple had a horse in the race with Color, but once Resolve became free or ridiculously cheap it was game over.. even for more advanced tools like Lustre (which merged into Flame), Film Light, Base Light, Scratch, etc. More than I can count which died even before that. Turns out if you can afford to give your tool to wide audience with no budget, that's what they'll use (especially if it's any good) and will end up turning to you eventually for more professional setups once / if they get into pro waters.
traceroute66 6mo ago
> The short of it is that there’s no money in photography Oh dear... I'd better go tell all the gear manufacturers, especially the higher-end kit like PhaseOne cameras and the Profoto flashes. Guess I should also tell the pro departments of Canon and Nikon they no longer have a job either. There's TONS of money washing around photography. From the wedding and sports photographers, to the paparazzi to the household-name fashion / landscape /architectural photographers. There's then all the semi-pros and the amateurs with deep pockets. Most of them will spend more money on insurance ALONE than the $295 asking price of DaVinci Resolve - Photo. Hell, most of them will already have an Adobe subscription that they won't be cancelling any time soon. :)
coldtea 6mo ago
>The short of it is that there’s no money in photography, compared to videography.Movies routinely have 8 or 9 digit budgets, with teams of hundreds of people who have to collaborate to make footage coming from dozens of different cameras look seamless and consistent. Movies are not where BlackMagic makes their money. It's from the millions and millions of small videographers, news teams, ad teams, and content creators. Same for photos.
dylan604 6mo ago
> Anyone working in video has a solid understanding of the technical underpinnings of their craft. Lol. That's the funniest thing I've read in a long time. I've been on so many sets where there was not a single person that knew how to read a waveform. After the Canon 5Dmkii came out where "the producer's nephew could shoot this for $500" became a thing, the skill set dropped dramatically. There are people that can frame a pretty picture while at the same time have zero understanding of what's happening between the lens and the sensor to the recording medium. When video cameras started shooting flat expecting the user to know what to do with that, it became a trend of sending the flat look out because people didn't know what to do with it. When DV cameras were shooting 24 but still recording to tape with pulldown applied so it still recorded to a 29.97 tape, people had no idea how to get rid of the interlacing properly and just edited 29.97 instead of the 24/23.976. You are giving way too much credit to people in the industry. It would be nice if everyone on the production crew and in post knew everything they should to be competent, but there are many many people fakin' it 'til they make it.

by gyomu 6mo ago

mastermage 6mo ago

Counterpoint most of the Movies budgets is usualy spent on the actors and on the filming. Not on the editing team. There is also copious amounts of money in photography Alot of advertising is still static images and print.

atoav 6mo ago
Yes, but if the budget of the whole thing is high(er) they don't tend to cheap out on details that could mske or break it. Or phrased differently: If your shoot codts a million a day it doesn't matter if your camera costs 400 bucks a day or 40. In fact they may ask you whether you really wanna go with the 40-buck camera.
- mastermage 6mo ago
  > Yes, but if the budget of the whole thing is high(er) they don't tend to cheap out on details that could mske or break it. The evidence does not point to this. There have been copious amounts of movies that hired the Rock and then made the worst CGI in the history of Cinema.

d3vnull 6mo ago

But there's a couple orders of magnitude more photo shoots than movies and since once you write software once, you can copy it for free, investing in creating photo editing software still makes sense.

hobofan 6mo ago

> Meanwhile, $1M would be an insane budget for a photo shoot. Photo shoots for automotive advertising regularly are around that pricepoint.

dbspin 6mo ago

Fundamental misunderstanding of the market dynamics here. There are at least an order of magnitude more people making a professional salary as photographers (ie.: enough to justify a software purchase) than professional videographers. Outside of film, videographers are generally paid a day rate about half as high as photographers, with enormously higher equipment costs. Film - hollywood, streaming, TV etc, combined actually employ a relatively small number of people. Sure there's enormously more budget for any given TV show than say a wedding photoshoot, but think about how many people get married, how many corporate photo sessions there are etc etc. Basically by conflating videography and cinematography you've obscured the issue. Source - I'm a videographer that also works as a cinematographer / director on smaller budget projects. Also on anything bigger than a very low budget short, it's editors and post people who are using the editing software not the videographers / camera operators / DOP. Bare in mind DaVinci does not own the film industry. It's very much still Avid's game, with Nuke for colour, and a small percentage of Adobe Suite.

motoxpro 6mo ago
100% agree. Photo is a much muuuch bigger market.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
PaulHoule 6mo ago
As a semi-pro photographer I look at the $295 pricing and think that is a very reasonable price for something that could help my photos look like my photos. I bought DxO PhotoLab for $235 and color grade with it all the time. Right now I use LUTs that other people made and have been thinking I’d like to learn to be more systematic and make my own. I don’t really do video but I have in the past so a video editor coming in a box sweetens the deal in the same sense that Adobe CC comes with, say, Premiere, which I use just occasionally. I can totally shoot video with my Sony and there is definitely a lot of demand for it on the internet these days. I also know Divinchi resolve is a product that many people in film/video are enthusiastic for and that counts too.
- 6mo ago

Keyframe 6mo ago

those big productions are production design and above the line heavy. Most people on shoots are paid well. However, if you look at the other side of the coin, hardware and software supporting the industry, it's actually "laughable". ARRI which is the biggest name in the game on shoots is ~$1b, RED was sold of for $85m, BMD could fetch as high as $3b, Autodesk's Media & Entertainment is <%5 of its revenue which would, if it were standalone, also bring it to around $1b valuation. Avid the same at ~$1.5, Grass Valley the same ~$1b-1.5, Sony's ET&S is hard to gauge since it includes everything, but an estimate is ~$1.5b, Maxon ~$1.5, all of Nikon $4b, Canon's camera division ~$15b... and then you have Adobe which has ~%65 of its revenue coming from Creative segment ($14-15b over $23.77 for 2025), which would put it at ~$70b - $100b valuation if it were standalone (5x-7x revenue). That's how big Adobe is compared to literally everything else. Its creative division is 3x-4x more than the entire industry combined. You do have new contenders now with Epic (~$22b), Canva ($26b), Figma ($20b), but I'm not convinced.. in certain segments for sure, but still not confident based on stock performance or revenue.

Forgeties79 6mo ago
Adobe may be a big dog but it hasn’t insulated them from black magic eating more and more of their NLE market share with every passing year. BMD went from making a (niche for everyone else) Hollywood color tool to a full blown NLE with almost 20% of the market share in less than a decade. Not to mention a very respectable camera line. I remember hearing the phrase “round tripping through resolve” for years as some sort of magical incantation only somebody in post production understood. Now resolve is fighting for Lightroom’s space within a full NLE. That’s something!
- Keyframe 6mo ago
  Yeah, BMD has a fighting chance. It's interesting how they got there (software-wise). They bought cutting-edge and expensive tools and kind of gave them away for free-ish. Hardware sales gave them a chest to do it with, and small market for those niche tools allowed them to buy it for peanuts. It's Autodesk's playbook on M&A but definitely different strategy in capturing the market. Even Apple had a horse in the race with Color, but once Resolve became free or ridiculously cheap it was game over.. even for more advanced tools like Lustre (which merged into Flame), Film Light, Base Light, Scratch, etc. More than I can count which died even before that. Turns out if you can afford to give your tool to wide audience with no budget, that's what they'll use (especially if it's any good) and will end up turning to you eventually for more professional setups once / if they get into pro waters.

traceroute66 6mo ago

> The short of it is that there’s no money in photography Oh dear... I'd better go tell all the gear manufacturers, especially the higher-end kit like PhaseOne cameras and the Profoto flashes. Guess I should also tell the pro departments of Canon and Nikon they no longer have a job either. There's TONS of money washing around photography. From the wedding and sports photographers, to the paparazzi to the household-name fashion / landscape /architectural photographers. There's then all the semi-pros and the amateurs with deep pockets. Most of them will spend more money on insurance ALONE than the $295 asking price of DaVinci Resolve - Photo. Hell, most of them will already have an Adobe subscription that they won't be cancelling any time soon. :)

coldtea 6mo ago

>The short of it is that there’s no money in photography, compared to videography.Movies routinely have 8 or 9 digit budgets, with teams of hundreds of people who have to collaborate to make footage coming from dozens of different cameras look seamless and consistent. Movies are not where BlackMagic makes their money. It's from the millions and millions of small videographers, news teams, ad teams, and content creators. Same for photos.

dylan604 6mo ago

> Anyone working in video has a solid understanding of the technical underpinnings of their craft. Lol. That's the funniest thing I've read in a long time. I've been on so many sets where there was not a single person that knew how to read a waveform. After the Canon 5Dmkii came out where "the producer's nephew could shoot this for $500" became a thing, the skill set dropped dramatically. There are people that can frame a pretty picture while at the same time have zero understanding of what's happening between the lens and the sensor to the recording medium. When video cameras started shooting flat expecting the user to know what to do with that, it became a trend of sending the flat look out because people didn't know what to do with it. When DV cameras were shooting 24 but still recording to tape with pulldown applied so it still recorded to a 29.97 tape, people had no idea how to get rid of the interlacing properly and just edited 29.97 instead of the 24/23.976. You are giving way too much credit to people in the industry. It would be nice if everyone on the production crew and in post knew everything they should to be competent, but there are many many people fakin' it 'til they make it.