In defense of the event photographer. Everyone has to make a living from what they do and you price items you sell based on what it costs you to poduce them and what the market will bear. Sounds like this group can't bear $45. However, Most professional photographers have a graet deal of $$$ invested in their equipment and knowledge base. SLR type digicam body only, near $8.000(medium format back $25,000 & up), lens $500.00 up, Computer and Photoshop about $1,600, a good printer at $600.00 and the knowledge and skill to put it all together to make beautyful image, priceless. Just might be that that $45.00 is a good deal after all.
Bob
Hmmm,
I believe just about everyone here can easily "bear" $45. But being able to and WANTING to are two entirely different situations. Having the money to spend doesn't mean you should spend it frivolously, regardless of price.
As for the cost of equipment:
To print a 8.5x11 full sized print at 300 dpi, you merely need a camera with a resolution of 3300x2550 pixels, which really is not at all hard to meet. You can get that easily with a Nikon D80 body which you can pick up for around $800. I would recommend a good Nikon zoom lens (the 18 - 70 zoom is really hard to beat for versatility for car pics) which can be had for right around $250. No one really needs medium format for this sort of application.
Color printer? A decent photo quality HP or Epson can be had for well under $300. Most people already have a computer, and as for PhotoShop, that program is hard to beat, but to simply overlay text and put a border around a digital image prior to printing it, there are OODLES of programs out there, some even for free, that can do this handily.
And this is not amortized over a single event. ALL of this stuff can be used year in and year out at multiple types of events, so it's not like the cost of the equipment must be met by dividing the number of potential sales at a single show into that initial cost.
I've got several color printers, and when I evaluated how much the price per page actually is concerning ink and photo quality paper, the price per page came to about $2 max. So materials really isn't that much of an issue when considering overall cost.
No, I think the price point is normally set by what the person believes the market will bear to buy a memento at an event, and what he believes his time is worth just being there. Does selling 20 prints at $45 a pop grossing $900 worth it? Or does he need to gross $2250 by selling 50 of them?
Realistically, no one is really going to care what it cost the guy to produce the pics. That is completely irrelevant to their buying decision. All that really matters is how much does it cost TO BUY, regardless of how the seller reached that price point. MANY businesses have gone out of business simply because the cost of producing an item is more than people are willing to spend to buy it. Others just priced themselves out of the market completely because they wanted more, regardless of cost to produce, then the market they targeted felt was worth the price asked.
What I did think was silly was their was a vender who took car pics as vehicles came in and then you could get that pic put against a number of very nice backgrounds, so far so good, until I asked how much? Just for the photo in 8.5 X 11. $45. :thumbsdown: Came home with pics I took and no cost.
JIM 
