Two thousand dollars buys one of three things at our rates: eight hours of photography at $1,800, six hours of film at $1,950, or one hour of photography and three hours of film at $1,978.
Only one of those three is a mistake, and it is the third.
What each side costs
Photography runs $698 to $2,300 across six packages, from one hour to twelve. Videography runs $1,280 to $2,850 across four.
| Film package | Coverage | Highlight film | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small wedding | 3 hours | 1–2 minutes | $1,280 |
| Package A | 6 hours | 3–4 minutes | $1,950 |
| Package B | 10 hours | 4–5 minutes | $2,450 |
| Package C | Full day | 5–6 minutes | $2,850 |
Every film package includes the highlight edit cut to music and a full-length edit of the day with all audio recorded. That second deliverable is the one people forget exists and the one they watch in ten years.
Note where the two ladders start. The cheapest useful hour of photography is $698. The cheapest useful hour of film is $1,280, because the medium does not scale down below three hours: a one-minute highlight still needs a ceremony, a set of cutaways and usable sound to cut from. There is no $500 entry point on the film side, and anyone offering one is either not recording proper audio or not editing.
Why photography goes first
Stills do more jobs. The album is stills. The frames on the wall are stills. The thank-you cards, the parents' prints, the photograph your grandmother puts on the fridge: all stills. A film does one job extremely well and does not do any of those.
Per dollar, photography also covers more of your day. At the $1,498 six-hour package you are buying coverage from preparation through to the speeches. At $1,280, film gives you three hours, which realistically means the ceremony and the group session and nothing else.
And there is a durability argument that people underrate. A gallery of 400 images gets opened by different people for different reasons over decades. A five-minute film gets watched intensely for about eighteen months and then on anniversaries. Both are worth having. They are not worth having in the same order.
The figure at which film stops competing
$2,778. That is six hours of photography at $1,498 plus the three-hour film package at $1,280, and it is the first combination where neither side is cut back to fund the other. You keep coverage from getting-ready through to speeches, and you still get a highlight film and a full-length edit of the ceremony with the vows audible.
Below that figure, adding film comes directly out of photography hours, and you feel it. A one-hour photography booking is built for elopements. Bolting a film package onto it to stay under $2,000 gives you a beautiful two-minute edit and a gallery that stops at the confetti.
Above $2,778 the arithmetic keeps improving. Six hours of stills plus six of film is $3,448. Eight and six is $3,750. Twelve and full-day, which is everything either medium can record, is $5,150. Nothing in that upper range surprises anybody who has priced a wedding in South East Queensland lately.
When film earns its place first
There are days where we would tell you to reverse the order, and they have a common shape: something happens at your wedding that a photograph structurally cannot hold.
Spoken content that matters more than usual. Vows written by hand. A speech from a parent who is unwell. A reading in a language your children will not otherwise hear. Audio is the thing you cannot retro-fit, and the full-length edit captures all of it.
Movement. A lion dance, a hora, a choreographed first dance, a haka. Still frames of motion are good. They are not the same event.
Family who cannot travel. If a significant part of your guest list is watching from overseas, a film is the artefact that travels. A gallery link is not the same gift.
If two of those three apply to your day, fund the three-hour film package first and take the shorter photography coverage. That is a defensible trade. One of the three is not enough to justify it.
Three splits that work
Under $2,000: photography only. Take the eight-hour package at $1,800 and keep the $200. If your day is short, take six hours at $1,498 and put the difference toward the album.
$2,800 to $3,500: both, unbalanced. Six hours of photography at $1,498 plus three hours of film at $1,280. Photography carries the day, film carries the ceremony and the sound.
$3,500 and up: both, matched. Six and six, or eight and six. At this point the photographer and the videographer are covering the same hours and the deliverables start reinforcing each other, because the same moments exist in both mediums from different angles.
Whatever the total is, the order holds: fund the photography hours first, then add film for the sound and movement a frame cannot hold. Every figure above is on the pricing page, and custom packages are built regularly for budgets that do not land neatly on one of them.
