$35 single sheet 8x10

[Kineticoh20]

We are currently on the Island. We just purchased several photos, the cheapest being $20 and the formal pics $35 wow I don't remember them being that expensive. It just seems to me if they were say $10 they would sell 400% more.

[Astro Flyer]

Formal portraits were $25 the last time we purchased one.

 

I always felt they could sell many more photos with a lower price. The high prices result in a lot of wasteful photos that no one purchases. It's been debated many times on CC about whether they're recyclable or not. We decline having photos taken when we have no interest in purchasing them but based on all of the photos at the end of the cruise we're in the minority.

[antsp]

Apparently they take an average of 55000 pics on a 7 day cruise and sell around %15

[crochetcruise]

We are currently on the Island. We just purchased several photos, the cheapest being $20 and the formal pics $35 wow I don't remember them being that expensive. It just seems to me if they were say $10 they would sell 400% more.

 

THANK YOU! Gulp, I better adjust my budget for photos then. Am in a Window Suite so had planned to get a Formal Photo and the embarkation photo. Guess I'd better budget $70 to allow for price increases and currency fluctuations-I'm in Australia but US pricing is a useful starting guide so I can be organised to pre-pay as much as possible and have On Board Credit for planned souvenir purchases and Casino Credit as a back-up plan.

 

Crochetcruise :cool:

[landnsea]

We are currently on the Island. We just purchased several photos, the cheapest being $20 and the formal pics $35 wow I don't remember them being that expensive. It just seems to me if they were say $10 they would sell 400% more.

 

Man that's just crazy high, what we do now it's just pay to have them put on our flash drive even that expensive.

 

John,Laura and Gaby

Seattle,Wa.

Go Seahawks

[Thrak]

Apparently they take an average of 55000 pics on a 7 day cruise and sell around %15

 

I wish the entire fleet would go to the same model they use on the Royal. Electronic pics and you can choose what you want to print out. No huge waste of printed photos.

[Colo Cruiser]

No packages?

[Woobstr112G]

Formal portraits were $25 the last time we purchased one.

 

I always felt they could sell many more photos with a lower price. The high prices result in a lot of wasteful photos that no one purchases. It's been debated many times on CC about whether they're recyclable or not. We decline having photos taken when we have no interest in purchasing them but based on all of the photos at the end of the cruise we're in the minority.

 

Must have been fairly recent. It was also $25.00 the last time we saiiled.....

 

Bob

[piper28]

I couldn't imagine paying $35 for the quality these photos are (or lack thereof). Even at $25 I've always felt they're overpriced for what you get. Far too many of the pictures I see out for sale are either noticeably over or under exposed (generally over). And heck, if I'm noticing that, they're pretty off.

[PurpleRose23]

It wouldn't be so bad if they had some type of package deal. If you look at how many pictures go unclaimed and they destroy, it is an absolute waste. On our last cruise, we declined taking pictures. Since I knew we were not going to buy them, I figured why contribute to the waste? On our next trip, we will probably do the formal pictures but, all of the pictures exiting and boarding the ship, we will again decline.

[chipmaster]

We are currently on the Island. We just purchased several photos, the cheapest being $20 and the formal pics $35 wow I don't remember them being that expensive. It just seems to me if they were say $10 they would sell 400% more.

 

I remembered my first cruise and almost gagged at the prices for both the formals and the awful staged boarding and port ones.

 

As time has passed and I've sat thru more professional and not so professional sittings I think you are getting pretty good value for the staged formals. Though the photographers are young they do a decent job with the lighting and backgrounds and I challenge you to find a cheaper land sitting where you can get a formal done for less ;)

 

Interesting thought at whether dropping the prices to 10 whether they'd sell more.

 

I was once told by a "professional" NEVER give away your pictures as then they won't be valued as much. But I've been to many events where the professionals charge similar and people agonize which one to buy, while I almost give away similar quality for a few bucks. Guess what, they don't buy any more than a couple either. Photographer/photographer is a difficult business, better to charge as much as they can bear :D

[caribill]

I wish the entire fleet would go to the same model they use on the Royal. Electronic pics and you can choose what you want to print out. No huge waste of printed photos.

 

When we were on the Royal they still had all the pictures printed in addition to the stations where you could view and order them.

 

We were told that the 3rd ship in the line (the one heading to China) will not have the printed photos and only the stations.

 

I expect that sales will go down when there are no printed photos to look at. Currently dozens of people can be looking at the printed photos at the same time. There will not be dozens of stations for passengers to use to look for your photos. Passengers will not wait in line for a turn to use a station.

 

And the software will need to be greatly improved to be able to quickly locate the photos you want to see. Using the stations is not intuitive. We tried to use the station and after spending over ten minutes unsuccessfully looking for a certain photo called one of the staff over to assist. The staff person looked for several more minutes then gave up and located the printed photo on the display case.

[molme]

When we did the behind the scenes tour 5 yrs ago they told us it costs 7 cents to print a picture. Seems like that is an awful lot of profit being made from pictures. I'm sure in those 5 yrs that the price of printing has home up some, but not to what they are charging. Has anyone done this tour recently and heard what the price of printing is now?

[AZJerry]

When we took the ship's tour we were specifically told by the staff the the unsold prints are recycled. Whether that's really true....

[antsp]

When we did the behind the scenes tour 5 yrs ago they told us it costs 7 cents to print a picture. Seems like that is an awful lot of profit being made from pictures. I'm sure in those 5 yrs that the price of printing has home up some, but not to what they are charging. Has anyone done this tour recently and heard what the price of printing is now?

 

That price rings a bell , to me to. That's when I was told about 55000 pics in a week and selling 15 percent

[skf]

It wouldn't be so bad if they had some type of package deal

I got us a package deal on our first Princess cruise, Sept 21 2001, San Francisco to San Juan via Panama Canal. It was $50 or $55 for a welcome aboard bottle of Korbel and some fruit; a half-bottle with breakfast; and any size framed photo. The 8x10 photo is over on the right, on the bureau.

I never again saw these deals offered.

Steve

[peety3]

$0.07 printing cost doesn't factor in the staff/equipment cost. Although the gear is mostly durable, stuff does break and they have to stock spares as they probably can't get proper replacements in a majority of their ports.

 

55000 prints * $0.07 is $3850 to print per cruise.

55000 prints * 15% * $25/print ("averaged price") is $206k revenue. Certainly some strong profit, but...if they were to lower the print price to $10/print, they'd need to sell nearly 40% of what they shot to make the same revenue. No matter how you slice that, I doubt 40% of the cabins buy at least one photo currently, and if only 40% of the cabins bought photos, those cabins would have to buy ALL of their photos to match the revenue they're booking now.

[piper28]

I was once told by a "professional" NEVER give away your pictures as then they won't be valued as much. But I've been to many events where the professionals charge similar and people agonize which one to buy, while I almost give away similar quality for a few bucks. Guess what, they don't buy any more than a couple either. Photographer/photographer is a difficult business, better to charge as much as they can bear :D

 

Traditional photography business has really been clobbered by the digital camera market. Wedding photographers in particular have been hit pretty hard from it, especially since their traditional business plan involves them owning the negatives and selling the prints. Nowadays it's a lot harder to convince prospective clients that they shouldn't get digital copies of the photos, and photographers are having to adapt to survive. The really good ones are still able to make do with that business plan, but there's an awful lot of people that have reached the thought that enough of their guests are likely to have cameras, and they can get "good enough" without paying the per print fees that those professionals want. So some of the professionals have moved to a model where they charge for the service and not the prints. Changing times.

 

My guess is we'll see a plan sometime in the future that allows you to pay a set fee for the digital copies of your photos from the cruise. That price will probably be higher than I'd want to pay myself, but I'm sure others might end up liking it. (I think Disney might have some type of plan like that now? Never been myself, but I thought my relatives have mentioned it.)

[avcruz]

Recently on the NCL Breakaway the photo gallery was all digital. You walked up to a touch screen and swiped your cruise card and then you could see any and all of the photos that had been taken. At that point you had three choices - delete (sadly, this is what we chose for all our photos, they just weren't well-focused or staged), print (sorry, don't remember the prices as we weren't buying) or you could (also for a fee) have them sent to some sort of Dropbox that you could access at a later time. I thought this was probably the most efficient and unobtrusive way to view and purchase photos. I also liked the fact that my photos weren't on display for all to see... :-)

[cb at sea]

My theory is...if you can't remember it without a picture, it's not worth remembering.

[PurpleRose23]

 

My guess is we'll see a plan sometime in the future that allows you to pay a set fee for the digital copies of your photos from the cruise. That price will probably be higher than I'd want to pay myself, but I'm sure others might end up liking it. (I think Disney might have some type of plan like that now? Never been myself, but I thought my relatives have mentioned it.)

 

YES...We were on the Disney Wonder 5 years ago and they tagged your room key when taking pictures. You then could go to one of the kiosks in the picture section of the ship and tag your room key and to see digitally all of the pictures that where taken by you and your family (they linked families together so you could see other members of your family at the kiosk). You then could order on the kiosk any pictures you wanted and had an option to get them digitally via CD. I was thinking Princess eventually do something similar, but that does not seem to be the case.

Edited June 28, 2015 by PurpleRose23

[Putterdude]

Unless we have a TAs coupon we don't buy them....however, I am the first to admit if they reduced the price we just maybe we would be inclined to purchase a few. We avoid embarkation photos and dining room pix, we may just tilt for a port photo if it is new to us....but we have all the formal pix we need.

[TLC535]

WOW :eek: that is quite a jump in price for one formal photo....they were still $25 on our Star sailing mid-May...craziness.

[cowgrrl]

My theory is...if you can't remember it without a picture, it's not worth remembering.

 

We don't buy them for ourselves, but for others. We have family that like a nice formal portrait of us so we usually budget to buy one on our cruises so they have a nice picture for the family portrait wall.

[RMM34667]

I don't usually buy pictures but I am really glad my parents did, especially now that my dad is gone. My dad would have never sat for a formal photo, but he did LOVE cruising. I can look over 30+ years of their cruising photos, my dad all dapper and smiling. I don't know what they paid but they are truly priceless.

 

I don't feel like I photograph very well and hate looking at pictures of myself. But the best picture I've ever seen of me was taken on the Star. I was going to buy it but then just never got around to it. I'd pay twice that today for that picture. I won't be here forever and think my children would probably liked to have that one. (or maybe I'm just vain and hate to think there isn't even ONE good picture of me out there!)