Booking a Studio: Deposits, Cancellations and Lead Times

The room and the rate are the easy part to compare between studios. The terms around the booking — deposits, cancellations, what happens if you overrun — are the part that actually decides how a shoot feels once money is involved, and they are usually the part nobody reads until something goes wrong.

How a booking is confirmed

At Scope, bookings run through Acuity, the online scheduling system — pick the room, the date and the time, and confirm. A booking is confirmed once full payment is made, or once a deposit is paid where a deposit applies. Whether a deposit applies to your booking, and how much it is, is confirmed to you at the time of booking rather than published as a blanket figure — a wedding-sized production and a two-hour headshot session are not the same risk, and pretending they are with one fixed percentage would either overcharge one or undercharge the other.

If you would rather talk it through before you commit a card, email first. A real person reads it and you get a real answer before anything is charged.

The 48-hour window

Cancel or reschedule with at least 48 hours' notice and there is no fee. Inside that window, a cancellation fee applies — the amount is confirmed to you at the time of booking, not guessed at afterwards — and same-day cancellations or no-shows are non-refundable. Rescheduling works the same way: 48 hours' notice and it is a straightforward move to another slot.

The practical takeaway is not to memorise a number. It is to build the decision into your own planning: if a shoot is genuinely weather-dependent, client-dependent or talent-dependent, know where the 48-hour line falls against your call time before you book, not after.

Overtime

Most shoots overrun. Time used beyond your booked session is charged as extra, and the rate for additional time is confirmed at the time of booking — ask when you book so there are no surprises at 6pm with a client still in the room. If there is a real chance you will run over, it is usually cheaper to book the longer block from the start than to pay the overtime rate for the same hours later.

• A half day is four hours, a full day is eight — and set-up and pack-down sit inside that time, not on top of it, so budget your actual shoot time accordingly.
• If your schedule is tight against the booked block, say so when you book. It is easier to hold extra time in advance than to find it on the day.
• Ask about the overtime rate at the same time you ask about the deposit — both are confirmed per booking, and asking once covers both.

None of these figures are secret. They are simply confirmed per booking rather than published as one number that would be wrong for half the people who read it.

What is fixed, and what to ask about

Some things are firm policy rather than case-by-case: cancellation notice is 48 hours, same-day cancellations are non-refundable, anyone under 18 must be accompanied by a responsible adult throughout, clients retain full rights to everything they shoot, and clients need their own production insurance. Full detail is on the terms page.

What is not fixed — the deposit amount, the overtime rate, exact opening hours on a given date — is not fixed because it genuinely depends on your booking, not because it is being withheld. Ask, and the answer comes back specific to your date rather than rounded to a figure that might not apply.