How much do you pay your second shooters? Whats the average pay for a whole day, like 6 or 8 hours?

How much experience will you expect them to have and what exactly will you expect from them? Will they do any processing or just hand over the files?

They have about 4 years experence, part time, 15 weddings a year, and they are going to be burning a DVD after the wedding.

How much do they ask ?

They haven't asked yet because I haven't asked them to shoot yet. I wanted to find out the going rate first since I have never used a second shooter before. I want to get a number together first to make sure I can afford to use a second shooter.

I would ask a guy how much he would want for it and then see if it work with me. I will second shoot for free next month. Sometimes it is like "you help me and one day I will help you" - paying forward, you know...

I'd say around $250-300 is what I see a lot, which is quite fair really.

So $150 is on the low side then? Thats what I thought.

I usually see $200-$500 for other professionals as seconds, no editing. Non-experienced seconds tend to go for $100-$200, also no editing.

I definitely like the idea of trading services with other professionals.

$250 - $500 depending on how experienced

I'd say $300-$500 depending on their experience or how good they are. Just because someone has alot of experience doesn't mean they're that good, and someone with not alot of experience can be amazing. Just some things to consider.

SR

I like that answer!

I usually pay ~$300-$400, which depends totally on how good they are. The amount of experience isn't a qualifier for me, if they're good, they're good

It also kind of depends on your area of the country, as a figure that's reasonable in one area might be totally out of whack in another.

-Jeff

I created a new set of wedding packages a couple of weeks ago - and I included $300 in my budget to pay a 2nd shooter for six hours of work.

I think you also have to take into account the area you live and what you are being paid to do the wedding. If you are only being paid $1500 to shoot the wedding and provide the digital negatives, then paying a second shooter $300-500 seems high. But if you're charging $10,000 per wedding, then paying a second shooter $500-1000 seems fair. A lot factors go into it.