Photo Printer for a Photo Booth

GadgetRick · March 25, 2010

Ok, shooting a wedding with a friend (my first but not his first) and the couple are requesting a photo booth. So I've been looking into it and how to do it. Honestly, I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

Anywho, part of the idea is to be able to give people a print when they take the shot. So I'm looking for photo printers. We can't afford a couple of grand for the, "top of the line," printer if you know what I mean. But I'm looking for suggestions as to which printers to look at. I know Canon and Epson make very good photo printers for a good price. We're not looking for any kind of large format prints for this.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

ziggy53 · March 25, 2010

Randy has done similar demand printing:

http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1003558&postcount=22

GadgetRick · March 25, 2010

Thanks a bunch Ziggy! Exactly the kind of info I was looking for!

tijoseph · March 25, 2010

I'd love to hear more about how the actual booth is set up, automated if so, etc.

Deacon · March 25, 2010

options
I do a lot of this for events and parties. I tether to Mac Book Pro which goes to Epson Picture Mate; http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/PictureMate/pmHome.jsp?oid=0&ref=r0302ETb48&s_kwcid=photo%20mate|773323620&gclid=CJCg7pK21aACFSBCgwod-iZYtw

It takes about 30-45 seconds for great prints (limited to 4x6). I have photo folders there and give them the photo in the folder as they pay. Typically $6.00 per print. Also a link to Smugmug where I post the photos if they want to buy more or larger prints.

Deacon

tijoseph · March 25, 2010

Deacon wrote:

I do a lot of this for events and parties. I tether to Mac Book Pro which goes to Epson Picture Mate; http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/PictureMate/pmHome.jsp?oid=0&ref=r0302ETb48&s_kwcid=photo%20mate|773323620&gclid=CJCg7pK21aACFSBCgwod-iZYtw

It takes about 30-45 seconds for great prints (limited to 4x6). I have photo folders there and give them the photo in the folder as they pay. Typically $6.00 per print. Also a link to Smugmug where I post the photos if they want to buy more or larger prints.

Deacon

Hey Deacon, thanks for your response.
Is this automated? How do they trigger the snap shot? I'd love to set something up where it does this automatically, and perhaps are basically "Renting" the photo booth.
Where do you use them, and do you get much business with it?

You may not want to share your secrets, but it's worth asking!

GadgetRick · March 26, 2010

We're not doing automated for the wedding. Me, my partner or our helper/assistant will be manning the booth at all times. A little bit of a pain but I think it may be quite fun. We're also not comfortable with leaving our gear alone.

Working on the booth setup now. We have some ideas. Once we get it all done we'll be testing it (of course) in the garage. I'll post up photos and info about it when we do. We'll probably have this set up to test in the next month (or so) so be patient. Luckily, the wedding isn't until June.

Thanks!

Deacon · March 26, 2010

Not automated for the reasons above and it moves very quickly so my wife shoots, I do a small bit of crop/touch up and print from the laptop and collect the $'s. I have used a remote shutter control that the subject can push when they are ready but almost always we take the better shot. I usually do 2-3 and let them pick which one they like best.

Deacon

gryphonslair99 · March 27, 2010

tijoseph wrote:

I'd love to hear more about how the actual booth is set up, automated if so, etc.

If your local video rental store has a good selection of TV shows check out How It's Made Season 7 Episode 10 or you can get it from I-tunes. One of the segments is how modern photo booths are made.

tijoseph · March 28, 2010

gryphonslair99 wrote:

If your local video rental store has a good selection of TV shows check out How It's Made Season 7 Episode 10 or you can get it from I-tunes. One of the segments is how modern photo booths are made.

Thanks! I'm getting it now, but I think these may be a bit more advanced than what I can put together!!

takeflightphoto · April 1, 2010

event or booth printer
Try this: http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/mkt-digitalphotography/mkt-digitalphotographyevent/product-UPCR10L/

Dont be shocked at the price. You can find them at about half that if you look around. Search on 'Event Printers" or "SnapLab".

I'm very pleased with mine.

GadgetRick · April 1, 2010

takeflightphoto wrote:

Try this: http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/mkt-digitalphotography/mkt-digitalphotographyevent/product-UPCR10L/

Dont be shocked at the price. You can find them at about half that if you look around. Search on 'Event Printers" or "SnapLab".

I'm very pleased with mine.

Thanks. We plan to buy a couple of printers in the next couple of weeks. Just waiting on getting paid on a job from my, "day," job.

SaraSmile · April 7, 2010

Ooooh good thread!

I helped setup a photo booth with a friend who runs a planning service catering to weddings. The printer became a big problem because we wanted to leave the booth unattended and the printer needed to be "accessible" (ie: steal-able) and high quality (we charge a pretty penny for each printout and didn't want sub-par results).

For the first run of the booth we just borrowed my home printer (Epson Stylus) and I bribed various people to watch the booth whenever I wasn't around to keep an eye on it.

On the next run we hired a friend to watch the booth and make sure nobody had any issues which was a total waste as nobody had any issues and she just wandered around bored and overpaid.

The booth was very popular, and was starting to pay itself off, so we started trying to find some sort of security solution but everything suggested wasn't portable enough or too expensive!

The Sony Snaplab solution was interesting but my BF at the time had a used transflective (sp?) touch screen from a point of sale setup that worked great and was very cheap. He also did the computer up for us really cheap so the only part we wanted was the printer.

Heck what I'd love is a portable security system that I can use at home when I travel.. I have too many goodies at home, and security is always on my mind. I don't even list my gear on sites like this because it's too risky.

With any luck we can both find a cool solution to our booths?

GadgetRick · April 10, 2010

SaraSmile wrote:

Ooooh good thread!

I helped setup a photo booth with a friend who runs a planning service catering to weddings. The printer became a big problem because we wanted to leave the booth unattended and the printer needed to be "accessible" (ie: steal-able) and high quality (we charge a pretty penny for each printout and didn't want sub-par results).

For the first run of the booth we just borrowed my home printer (Epson Stylus) and I bribed various people to watch the booth whenever I wasn't around to keep an eye on it.

On the next run we hired a friend to watch the booth and make sure nobody had any issues which was a total waste as nobody had any issues and she just wandered around bored and overpaid.

The booth was very popular, and was starting to pay itself off, so we started trying to find some sort of security solution but everything suggested wasn't portable enough or too expensive!

The Sony Snaplab solution was interesting but my BF at the time had a used transflective (sp?) touch screen from a point of sale setup that worked great and was very cheap. He also did the computer up for us really cheap so the only part we wanted was the printer.

Heck what I'd love is a portable security system that I can use at home when I travel.. I have too many goodies at home, and security is always on my mind. I don't even list my gear on sites like this because it's too risky.

With any luck we can both find a cool solution to our booths?

I will keep everyone up to date on what we decide on. We're narrowing it down and are going to shoot a dance festival in the next couple of weeks and use the photo printer as a dry run. I'll let you know how it works out.

SaraSmile · September 3, 2010

GadgetRick wrote: »

I will keep everyone up to date on what we decide on. We're narrowing it down and are going to shoot a dance festival in the next couple of weeks and use the photo printer as a dry run. I'll let you know how it works out.

Any updates Rick? We took a look at an advanced thermal printer for point of sale applications that was really neat, very portable and rugged, but just not appropriate for photo printing. It was also freaking expensive!

I saw a company on line that has a minivan with a Xerox Phaser printer mounted in the back on a wifi connection. So the photo booth prints in the van and you get these really gorgeous prints that are environmentally friendly and low cost. I loved the environmentally friendly statement but they didn't mention how many times they start up the van to keep the batteries charged while printing a lot of photos!

GadgetRick · September 3, 2010

Whoops! Sorry, forgot to update.

We wound up getting an Epson printer and it worked just fine. The whole photobooth was a HUGE hit. We had a line of people waiting to get their picture.

pmbpro · September 3, 2010

Glad it worked out well!

Which EPSON model printer did you get? I own an EPSON too. :-)

GadgetRick · September 4, 2010

Gotta check with my friend as it was his gig and he bought it. I don't remember the model.

rosey · September 4, 2010

Dear Deacon ,

This is my first time on digital grin and came across your post. I have an Epson Picture Mate and a Mac Book Pro.
I have never used the mate as I usually do 5x7's but have recently agreed to do a photo booth for a fund raiser.
Is there any tricks that I might learn from you or do you have any suggestions.

rosey @ presents@sonic.net

Deacon wrote: »

I do a lot of this for events and parties. I tether to Mac Book Pro which goes to Epson Picture Mate; http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/PictureMate/pmHome.jsp?oid=0&ref=r0302ETb48&s_kwcid=photo%20mate|773323620&gclid=CJCg7pK21aACFSBCgwod-iZYtw

It takes about 30-45 seconds for great prints (limited to 4x6). I have photo folders there and give them the photo in the folder as they pay. Typically $6.00 per print. Also a link to Smugmug where I post the photos if they want to buy more or larger prints.

Deacon

YMRPhoto · October 7, 2014

I know this reply is over four years later but I just shot my first photo booth at a wedding last night. I was shooting at the last minute for a company that does wedding events, etc. We would shoot the attendees, insert the card in the CF slot on the printer and select which photos and how many to print.
It took about 12 seconds to print a 4X6 and the bride paid for 4 hours (which I thought was way too long) so the attendees could get their pic taken as many times as they wanted. Each person in the pic would get a pic and 1 also went in to the brides guest book. A lot of the people took advantage =(
I think if I was running the show, I would price it for 2 hours, if possible and include a print maximum. It was also nice not to have to be tethered to a computer and the printer had a pop up screen to choose pics easily.
Sure would be curious to know what the company I shot for was paid for the photo booth gig.

Photo Printer for a Photo Booth

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