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I would pay for the CD for the reasons you mentioned, if it's in your budget.
I would try to find a different photographer. Some of them hate giving the pictures on the CD, so they will charge hundreds of dollars for it (they seem pretty stuck up about it). Others actually include a CD in their package, and might be an equally talented photographer.
But you definitely need to purchase the CD with rights to reproduce the pictures if you want to use them for STDs, etc.
Our photographer gives us our engagement Cd AFTER the wedding is over. Yeah. Couldn't use them. But, if we wanted to use them FOR the wedding, we had to buy them
Is that an option? Spend $100 on prints/rights for a book then free CD later?
Sometimes that "free" cd is just factored into the higher cost of the session, so if you got your session cheap i'd just go with the cd
That is a slightly rediculous price for a CD. I feel it takes more time to actually print the photos than to burn them, and I deal with a lot of pics, like up to 5,000/weekend when I am helping out our freind with his photography buisness.
They will be better on the CD than if you have to get them printed and then rescan them into the pc for all your stationary, so if you go with that photog, you may want to get the CD or see if you can work someting else out...like pick out you faves of the 50 and see if you can get dugutal copies of just those for your stationary, not even on a CD, just emailed to you or something.
You have to remember, the CD is basically the photographer giving you the tools to finish the job. It's the same as a plumber you hire allowing you to save some money by completing the job after he does the more difficult work of fixing the pipe, by giving you some screws, nails and a hammer so you can put the wall back together yourself.
Some would do it, others wouldn't. Photography is the same thing - and the new generation photographer has a drastically different pricing structure than the older one. When people shot film, there was no "CD" to give a client, unless they were all individually scanned, which costs money, and you lose some quality. The photographer would then in turn sell prints, helping to increase the profit from the job and hopefully stay in business.
The new model is to charge more for the service up front, and include the CD, as mentioned, or, to charge a large amount for the CD, to offset the costs that would normally have been included with selling prints.
Someone who works full-time as a photographer mostly sees their job as being from setup to delivery of the finished print. I still know some people who refuse to sell a CD, because they want to control the finished product and ensure that the quality of print is up to their standards.
As other have mentioned, there are always other photographers willing to work for under the traditional market price for various reasons.
Hopefully that sheds some light on why a photographer would charge a larger amount for the CD than the session.
Good heavens! We paid $50 for a DVD with all 400+ raw pics on it as well as the 125+ edited ones.
Ouch, that's a lot of money for 50 pictures! I probably wouldn't pay for it. I'd buy what I wanted to frame. Then, since you want save-the-dates, you may be able to scan one of the photo's and use it. My friend is a novice in graphics but he was able to make it look perfect, even though it was actually a scanned photo. But, if its in your budget, I'd buy it. But you have to LOVE all the pics!
I've heard of CD's costing up to $3500! I probably wouldn't pay it, but we chose a photographer where the CD was a part of the package and didn't cost extra. Is is too late to find a photographer who would do that?
That seems high, but my orginal photographer wanted to charge us $1000 per image at one point - later lowered her price to $35/image. I know its their work/art, but really, what are they going to do with all your images if you don't buy them. Everyone wants them for electronic uses now anyway - not prints. It seems like they'd make a lot more money to offer it for say $100 vs the $350.
The reduced sitting fee probably helps contribute to the high CD price. Our photographer charge us $300 for the session, but that included a CD when my daughter and I had our pictures taken by her last year.
The session price is REALLY good. The CD price, not so much...
I want to make sure everyone knows that scanning pictures is going against the copyright and is illegal, the photographer owns the rights to the pictures they take. Also, you need to think about how many other factors go into their cost - just to run a business adds up. I think you're getting a very good deal only $7 a photo, maybe they can offer you a smaller amount of e-pictures with a lower priced CD?
Our CD of our wedding photos cost $500. It is a lot, but when you think about it, I still think that it's not too off base. You basically end up with the tool that you need to print any and all photos and however many copies that you want at any time. I'd much rather pay for the CD and have the choices anytime down the road, than to have to decide on a photo package now (when I can't make another single decision) or a decision that I may make differently down the road. In defense of the photographer, they're giving up their ability to sell you anything after the shoot once the wedding is over. I don't think that it's really unfair of them. They need to make a living too, and without selling photos, they're just making a partial fee for their shoot time alone.
That seems like a lot of money, but if it's in the budget and you love the pictures, I would buy the CD. Ours came with the package and I love it. I've already printed out a whole bunch of pictures and used it for our Save the Date and table numbers. Plus I just love pictures, so they're hanging up around the house and such.
We're getting only a CD of our wedding photos--no prints--but we are also getting a full release so that we can use the images however we want. Our photographer will charge us $100 per hour for the photography, plus another $100 for the CD and release. I would much rather have that than a per-print charge. This way, a friend can make our album for us, we can make whatever prints we want, and we can put the images up on a website and let our guests make prints of the photos they like.
Personally, the cd with all of the images is the most important part for me - I want to be able to reprint my images any time I want to. My number one factor in finding a photographer was finding one who would give us a cd with ALL of our EDITED images. Luckily, I found one who does! When I asked if they were edited she said "Of course! I would never give you unedited images"...that's when I knew I'd found her 
.
My advice is that if it's important enough to you, go for it. But if you don't really care to have the images on a cd, then don't spend the extra money.
DO NOT scan the photographer's work without permission. That is illegal and wrong.
That said, does your photographer know what you'd like to do with the images? If there is one in particular you'd like to use for STDs, you may be able to buy just that one or two photos to use in file form, plus any prints you'd like. The CD is going to cost more, because as someone else pointed out, the photog is giving up all possibility of making prints, etc. for you in the future. On larger prints, he/she probably has a good printing service, too, that will be worth it for prints you want to hang.
I think you should just talk to your photographer about buying a few of the individual files and see how that comes out.
Good luck!
That seems kind of steep. Does he/she offer any packages with cd's included?
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Would you pay $350 for a cd of your 50 engagement pictures plus the $100 for the session or would you buy pictures a la carte? I'm just thinking if I don't get the CD, I won't be able to get STD's, a guestbook, or print other pictures out to put in frames later on down the road. But the price just seems to steep to me and she won't lower the price at all. What to do?