DIY Portable Wedding Photo Booth

DIY Portable Wedding Photo Booth
While planning for our wedding we decided that it would be great to use a photo booth as our guest book.  After looking at rental costs I decided to take it upon myself to build my own, and since I like projects like this I thought it sounded like a lot of fun!

Since our wedding was taking place several states away it had to be easily portable.  And since it was our wedding it had to look as professional as possible, and be fully automated.  With those basic requirements and a lot of work I ended up with something that everyone was happy with, including my wife!

Overview
1) Photo Booth Software
2) Equipment
3) Start Button
4) Booth Frame
5) Booth Panels
6) Conclusion

If you enjoy this instructable please check out some of my other projects at http://www.laserpup.com
 
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Step 1DSLR Remote Pro

DSLR Remote Pro
The first item that I solved was what photo booth software to use.  I wanted something that automated the entire process, you click a button and eventually your photos get printed out.  That is the limit to the user interaction that I wanted.

Since I was attempting to make due with many of the resources I had around the house I was limited to a windows operating system, and all of the apple solutions were no longer an option.  I couldn't justify a new computer for this project!  

After looking at the price and features I settled on DSLR Remote Pro.  This has a photo booth mode that looked perfect, with just enough customization to get what I wanted.  There were versions of the software for both Canon & Nikon cameras, and the price was very reasonable when compared to the cost of the commercial photo booth software I found.

Display Screens

The software allows you to design custom display screens with operating instructions to the people in the booth.  These custom screens allowed me to reuse some graphics from our wedding website, and although I'm sure no one noticed I thought that this was a nice touch.

I created 4 screens that the user would see with different static text. 
1) Start Screen
     Displays a quick instruction on how to start the photo booth.
2) Count Down Screen
     The screen image does not contain any text, but the software will display a countdown timer and show what picture it is currently taking.
3) Smile Screen
     Displayed before the camera snaps the picture for ~ 1 sec.
4) Processing screen
     Displayed after all the pictures have been taken, a progress will show as the final photo strip image is created and sent to the printer. 

Print Options

There print options provided by the software were overkill for what I needed, and it really only took a few test prints to get exactly what I wanted.  Four photos per page, with the set of four duplicated on one 4x6 print.  The idea here was that after the photos have printed our guests could cut the photo in half with a pair of scissors, taking one copy of the print with them and dropping the other copy in a box for us.

We'll take all of the copies and eventually frame them into what will be our guest book.  I did get away from one of my requirements here by forcing our guests to cut the print in half.  That is more interaction than I originally wanted, but really couldn't figure an easy way around it.  In the end it worked out just fine, and no one seemed to mind.

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45 comments
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Aug 29, 2011. 11:46 AMpolo724 says:
hi what was your setting on the camera? auto or manual, thanks
Aug 29, 2011. 11:32 AMpolo724 says:
HI Dohjoe nice photobooth, I'm working on 1 too for my daughter's 16th bday and I hope you don't mind if I copy your design. I like that push button idea but I'm clueless with wirings and soldering. How did you construct this big red button? any schematic or plan from start to finish and parts list, I would greatly appreciated, thank you.
Aug 24, 2011. 10:57 PMiblowstuffup says:
I have recently built a photobooth for our upcoming wedding, and I decided to write my own photobooth software. It will be available as "open source" here soon probably on source forge. If anyone can use it, let me know! (its for canon cameras only)
Dec 10, 2010. 10:52 AMmaximus4444 says:
dohjoe - Where did you get your arcade push button? I've been looking for one just like that but I can't find anything that looks like the "Big Red Button" concept.

Any ideas?
Jul 24, 2011. 11:41 PMegarciadesigns says:
The best place i found to order this size push button was at spark fun http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9181
Jul 10, 2011. 3:13 PMegarciadesigns says:
I was able to find the 3-way joints at Lowes.
Jun 30, 2011. 1:34 PMnbua says:
Probably a stupid question but I really need to know for the background .. What are the Dimensions.. How tall and how wide should the booth be ? I want to create a background and not sure what size the average photo booth is!

Thanks :)
Jun 7, 2011. 5:33 PMtrevormates says:
Very cool. You can also get the 3-Way and 4-Way PVC joints from formufit.com. Another great source.
Oct 3, 2010. 6:55 PMjoeny1980 says:
An idea, instead of leaving a pair of scissors out - I would suggest buy a perforator for a few bucks and just perforate all of your 4x6 photo paper before hand.

I would have liked if the alignment of the photos was a little better positioned (there was alot of negative space) maybe making the curtain area smaller would have helped to have better framed shots.

Cool project though, very nice.
May 31, 2011. 6:48 PMSelahJayMa says:
Never would have thought to use a perforator... guess you'd just have to test it a couple times on a few printouts to preforate at just the right spot & not chop any of the photo, but it definitely saves you from imposing the the hassle of having folk cut (and potentially mess up with) the photos themselves. GREAT idea, joeny1980!!
May 30, 2011. 6:46 PMsoutherngent says:
Has anyone looked at Sparkbooth? Its a lot cheaper then DSLR Remote Pro.
Apr 29, 2011. 8:53 PMlumlum says:
hi! I am the president of a club on my college campus and thought it would be great to have one of these booths not only for taking pictures, but for also showing short video clips of our club and power points.

we have all the techonology, but need an easy to set up, portable booth like the one you built. would it be possible for us to buy the one you made or pay you to make one?

thanks and have a great day!
Sep 30, 2010. 10:49 AMpalkster says:
Very nice. I built a booth for our wedding. I like your use of PVC as it looks alot more portable than our wooden one which now resides outside on our porch. Our frames looked similar. But I did build the main unit in two pieces which were held together with bolts and butterfly nuts. This allowed me to fit it into my Prius with two trips. The outside is paneling which I painted. Inside the booth, I had my MacBook running a program called Partybooth. I had an external monitor, and a hole big enough for a web cam. Below the monitor was a button similar to yours. It printed out 2 copies of 2x6 strips. One for them, one for our book. We also had a box of props which turned out to be alot of fun. The party lasted longer than expected because everyone wanted to do the photobooth again. It was a hit!
photo.jpegphoto-1.jpeg
Jan 4, 2011. 8:57 AMTabbyDeAnne says:
Awesome colors palkster! Do you have an 'ible on this? What does the inside look like? Thanks!
Jan 4, 2011. 11:16 AMpalkster says:
I didn't take the time to document my work. Mainly because I started two days before the wedding, So it was thrown together at the last second. But the inside had a monitor with a webcam hole above and a start button below. On both sides of the monitor I cut out and installed fluorescent lights so people weren't dark blobs, and because our reception was at a park at night. We had a generator running to power the booth's peripherals as well as the other lights and music at the party. Sadly, after taking up space on our porch for four months, I dissembled it and the parts are now waiting to be used on some future project.
Oct 3, 2010. 4:06 PMjohnwu says:
(removed by author or community request)
Oct 3, 2010. 7:08 PMpalkster says:
Dear John Wu,
After searching the web for the best photo booth software, I decided that Party Booth was the all out winner. It had every feature I needed, was SO easy to use and affordable. I hope your software gets great attention because it made our reception a blast!
Nov 15, 2010. 8:47 AMjohnwu says:
Update: the application is now named Spark Booth
Sep 28, 2010. 2:23 PMmhudnall says:
Very nice! Our friends built a photo booth for their wedding as well, only out of plywood, metal framing and it had white-board on the outside so folks could write messages. Inside had a bench and a touch screen.

Cost was kept relatively low because things like the printer, software, and high end camera was already owned by the bride's brother, who does event photography. They were even able to use it again for when the bride's brother got married two weeks later. Plus it makes appearances at all the parties.

4800678946_9cedc7031e.jpg4800045125_170c7aa51a.jpg4800043541_4ff96fedc7.jpg4800679620_fbf029d1ac.jpg4741217794_4326f3d378.jpg4741243992_323711962d.jpg4943967716_25dd53d475.jpg
Jan 4, 2011. 8:55 AMTabbyDeAnne says:
I love this mhudnall! Do you have an 'ible on this? Thanks!
Jan 4, 2011. 8:33 AMfirefhtr9 says:
Do you happen to remember which model PictureMate you used?
Sep 28, 2010. 10:23 PMjongscx says:
I love it when nerds get married. It gives me hope for humanity's future...

Another idea is that you could put a dry-erase tablet and tethered marker inside of the booth, so that the subjects could scrawl out a message :-D

Jan 4, 2011. 8:14 AMTabbyDeAnne says:
LOVE that idea! Dry erase tablet! Going on my list! Thanks!
Sep 30, 2010. 7:12 AMhammer9876 says:
Very nice! Some people get very creative with only four photos and can actually act out a story line. Well, maybe not with the addition of alcohol.
Jan 4, 2011. 8:10 AMTabbyDeAnne says:
The alcohol might make it a bit more interesting of a story line... in my group of friends it would be R rated at least! lol! Great comment!
Sep 30, 2010. 12:02 PMgnume says:
did any one try to use one way mirror for the camera ?
Jan 4, 2011. 8:09 AMTabbyDeAnne says:
Wow! Really neat idea! I am going to do some research into that and see if it would be a better alternative. Good idea! Thanks!
Sep 26, 2010. 12:35 PMRedMeanie says:
Awesome Idea!! Ive always wanted something like this for parties. Also Great work on the Instructable itself!

What did the software run you? Also can you can you give a Ballpark figure on total costs?

Nice Work!
Dec 31, 2010. 8:58 PMSmitty75 says:
I bought the DLSR software but having trouble setting the
photo size . Could I ask your help on settings ?
papadoo1atgmail.com
Thanks,
Smitty75
Nov 11, 2010. 4:52 AMvigorotaku says:
Great Setup!
Check out another example Photo Booth from a recent wedding at http://vigorotaku.blogspot.com/ November 1st.
It was a lot of fun and a really big hit! I have some diagrams of what I use with explanations and an example pic. The link to the specific page is here
Nov 11, 2010. 4:50 AMvigorotaku says:
Very good ideas here! Check out another example Photo Booth from a recent wedding at http://vigorotaku.blogspot.com/ November 1st. It was a lot of fun and a really big hit! I have some diagrams of what I use with explanations and an example pic. The specific link is here
Nov 11, 2010. 4:43 AMvigorotaku says:
Very good ideas here!

Check out another example Photo Booth from a recent wedding at
http://vigorotaku.blogspot.com/
November 1st. It was a lot of fun and a really big hit!

I have some diagrams of what I use with explanations and an example pic.

The specific Photo Booth is here
Oct 24, 2010. 9:22 PMpictureme2 says:
Great information! I am so glad you are sharing!
I would like to test this out with my Macbook Pro and the Photobooth software that's already installed.

I need see if this will work at kids party, birthday parties, anniversaries, and baby showers. I see that David Ciine used his macbook as a photo booth.

I am a photographer and I love how my DSLR camera delivers good quality pictures. I am not sure how the print-outs will look from using the photo booth on my Macbook pro.
Oct 13, 2010. 8:18 PMSmitty75 says:
Great design. . .I want to build one.
What's the cheapest camera I can use with
the DSLR Remote Pro software ?
The Canons are a bit pricey.

Smitty
Oct 6, 2010. 10:07 AMlinkyta says:
Aren't you an amazing groom?? This is soooo adorable! Your bride must have been sooo happy. Congrats!!
Sep 28, 2010. 10:56 AMyacht_boy says:
I did something similar for my wedding, but decided to go with a nicer frame than PVC and also a touch screen computer. In the end, the whole kit ended up costing me several times what a rental would have. Fun, but certainly not cost-effective. Also, with a rental, you won't have to be messing around with your photobooth at your wedding when you have much more important things to think about.


I ended up renting my booth as a side business, mostly to defray the costs of the booth. It will take me 5 or 6 rentals to pay for the booth--certainly not a big money-maker.


Regardless of which way you go, here are the big cost drivers:


--a decent printer. The Sony UPCX1 goes for about $800 and you can buy perforated paper custom made for photobooths. The paper is expensive, $200 a box (enough to do 2 events, usually). This paper and printer setup are better than the photo printers you get at Staples, and faster, too.


--the frame and materials: PVC and fabric are OK, but if you're going to use it multiple times you want something a little heavier duty. We used black iron pipe and brass fittings. But I am impressed by the PVC and fabric setup you built!


--software: the software you used is great, runs about $100


--camera: I used a low-end Canon point-and-shoot I got on eBay for $100, plus an AC adapter from Amazon for another $30 or so. Not as nice a camera as you have, but cheaper, easier, and perfectly fine for the booth. But I would like to step up to something like yours eventually...
--Computer: I bought a touch screen so I wouldn't have to use a physical button, plus it looks nicer than a laptop. Some people use laptops, or laptops with external monitors. Your costs will vary.



So it's hard to see how you could do this with a good printer for less than the cost of a rental, but you will end up with a photobooth if you want one. My bride would probably say you should just rent. I say building it was fun and I've enjoyed taking it to bigger parties and renting it out.


www.thephotobot.com

Oct 5, 2010. 6:02 AMfrollard says:
The beauty of the diy method is you don't need an 800 dollar printer. Since it will only have to spit out a hundred smaller strips, a 50 dollar printer 'that can handle the correct size paper' would be cheap. Cutting your own out of larger 8 1/2x11 paper down to size would be a lot cheaper. computer bits are cheap, like you say, and if you're printing a 2 inch picture, you only need about 1 megapixel for a quality print. If you want to store the pictures and use later, a cheap cheap point and shoot with adequate flash/lighting will easily do the job.
Sep 30, 2010. 8:06 AMErissed1 says:
:D This is a great idea, i have always wanted to take me pictures with one of that machines, and for a wedding, wow, i want to try it on mine.
Sep 29, 2010. 7:56 PMBurning Bus Man says:
Fabulous! What a great idea for weddings. This way you'll get pictures of almost everyone no matter what.

Love the pictures of your grandparents. Cute!
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