While some focus on weddings and others focus on corporate stuff, what do you do in order to make your camera pay for itself?

It depends on your camera. It dictates your jobs. For example, shoot a couple of $2K weddings and your Sony PD-170 is paid for. Shoot a couple of $50K commercials with the F900 and it's paid for. However, it won't make sense to shoot weddings with an F900.

Your camera doesn't really dictate your jobs. Don't let your kit hold you back, if your up to higher budget work then take it and hire the kit in.

Any way I can. Though I have found that filming cheesy sequences for magicians for their web site against a green screen makes me more money than a feature length documentary... Sad, really.

Moved from Open DV to TCB.

The price of my cameras is one of my lower costs of doing business. A $5k camera is nothing compared to rent, utilities, insurance and a $100k per year payroll.

We shoot corporate video - training, sales, promotional. We design web sites and develop web applications. We have several other smaller services, but they pretty much all relate to corporate promotion.

So instead of looking at that cool camera you bought and trying to figure out how to pay for it, look at what skills and talents you have and how you can best capitalize on them. At that point, it doesn't matter if it's a camera, a drill press or a hammer. They're simply tools to do a job.

Legal work keeps me afloat during lean times. Boring? Most of the time absolutely, but the boring stuff can lead to interesting projects that actually involve creativity :).

Of course I'd rather be working on material with more positive energy (and seen by more than a jury of 12) and often do, but it's a nice niche' that pays well and is recession-proof.

http://www.treehousemedia.net

I have about 3 major clients that make up the bulk of my work: a church, another local NFP, and a scientific media company. I could live off that, but I keep trying to get more work so I can pay of my mortgage early and stock up on, oh, I dunno, gold bars and Whatchamacallits.