Photo booths are all the rage right now and as someone who is both a photographer and lover of pictures, providing one at my own events seemed like a no brainer.
In preparation for my birthday this year, I spent some time researching buying photo booth software to use with my computer. The problem was, the software that I found that was at a reasonable price for my budget used the computer's camera to take photos. Though it was very user friendly and guests could set up their shot themselves, the fact that the images would be so much lower quality than my camera made me decide to set one up myself.
After a little more research online, my handy photo biz husband set up our camera to run it's own photo booth. We provided a remote and Brent set up our camera so that guests could take the pictures themselves. The super cute and inexpensive props I found at Walmart for $3!!!
Here is what you will need (based on a great video tutorial from Adorama):
-Any DSLR camera (we used our Nikon D90)
-Wide angle lens (we used 24-70mm)
-Normal mount flash
-Extra batteries handy for camera and flash--set the flash facing your photo booth and set on auto (if you have an actual booth you can face it backwards but we didn't have anything reflecting light back)
-Shutter speed set to 200
-Aperture set to f/8
-ISO set to 800 for more light (especially if your event goes into the evening)
-Remote or pocket wizard (and cable) for people to trigger camera
-As lighting changes, check to make sure that you are still producing good images. The flash should do the trick but if you experience extreme light changes, it never hurts to double check.
Of course, a cute backdrop also helps.
The photos come out in single images which are fun by themselves, but I use Picassa (free photo editing software) to quickly put multiple photos into a collage to then post on Facebook and print out to include in thank you cards.
Last year we set up a similar photo booth but I stood behind the camera and took pictures because it was a much smaller party. You can read about the details here.
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