But that didn’t mean that we were about to jump right into it without doing the right research. In truth, we probably spent over 40 hours of total time researching, testing, and prepping for our first photobooth event. As always, we’re here to guide and help you guys out and share what we learned about photo booths.
Initial Decisions When Starting a Photobooth Business
There are dozens of various ways to line up a photobooth but they typically fall into two categories:
Enclosed booths
Open-air/Modular booths
We immediately eliminated the enclosed booths for our business because these large structures are inconvenient to move and are limited within the number of guests you'll fit at just one occasion . Moreover, they're expensive, require a high power source, and therefore the quality of images is restricted . The last reason was versatility. In 10 years, technology will certainly be very changed. There are already flip-book photo booths and video photobooths, and we didn’t want to be burdened with old, out-dated technology.
Turn-Key Photobooths vs. Customized Photo Booths
From there we wanted to make the choice between turnkey solutions or customized solutions. Turnkey solutions offer everything that is needed to start out a photobooth. the favored ones at the time we were researching came with a Canon Rebel, a dye sublimation printer, a generic flash, and therefore the basic carrying cases.
Photobooths image quality was the main issue for us with Turn-Key. Though a Canon Rebel would possibly suffice as a camera, the low-quality flash output was our major qualm. On top of that, the value of the bundles was 10% to fifteen above their individual costs at retail.
However, if you’re looking to easily get something that works well and appears decent, this is often not a nasty option. This is especially the case if you haven't got enough time in your hands to research everything individually.
Custom Photobooth Options
From there, we narrowed it right down to either of the following:
Pipe and drape, the light-weight pipes that you simply would see at a tradeshow with unique drapes that enclose the booth inside a square
Completely open, fixing a backdrop and leaving everything else open
Lee Morris of the Fstoppers shows you his wedding photobooth design in his the way to Become a billboard Wedding Photographer DVD. His setup is totally open, with a couple of absolutely unique characteristics that make that aspect of his business a hit . The most important issue here is that each one of your guts are showing, from your light stands to your printers. However, the tradeoff is hype. With a totally open setup, all of the guests are seeing all of the fun activities; and therefore the hype is going to be great at drawing crowds. Again, inspect Lee’s section in his DVD to ascertain how he adds his own twist in order to make his booth unique and memorable.
We decided that we will go with a Pipe and Drape solution, with black draping and adjustable pipes. Note that amazon.com may or might not currently have the adjustable drapes available and you'll need to attend a tradeshow specialist website for these materials. For the pipe and drape setup, expect to pay around R5000 to R8000.
I knew this wasn’t the foremost attractive method for photobooths within the world, but it absolutely was flexible. The pipes expand from 6 to 10 feet and you'll be able to switch out the drapes to match your client’s preferences. Here is a wide selection of attractive backdrops from Amazon.
Photobooth Equipment:
– For the printer, we chose a DNP version RX-1.
– For lighting effects, we make use of a Neweer strobe flash with a detachable modeling light.
– For our camera, we used our backup camera body, the EOS 1100D, and a wide-angle 16-35 Lens. While the Mark II may be a bit of overkill it does impress clients and guests who understand photography and therefore the use of a full-frame professional camera will be a marketing point in your business.
Photobooth Software
For our Photobooth software, we went with the DSLR booth for the subsequent reasons:
Simplicity – the most important thing I wanted was simplicity. I wasn't not planning to be the actual operator for the booth so we wanted to have simple software that is user-friendly and would not present any issues.
Cost – The software is quite inexpensive at only R1500.00. As mentioned earlier, the photobooth industry is rapidly changing and it doesn’t add up to spend R7000 or more on software which will not fit your business in the next few years.
Versatility – Lastly, the software was versatile. you'll be able to select the layout, add a custom logo together with your client’s names thereon , and it just about automates the remainder of the process. Your operator snaps away and therefore the software groups the pictures and prints them in your selected layout.
Separate Photobooth Business or Under Photography Business
Every business is different, and your decision will vary here counting on where you reside , your current market, and your existing clientele. For us, we decided to make a separate website and business for our photobooth business. While keeping it under the identical name would help in some ways, we felt like it would hurt others. it might help in that there would be some brand recognition of our established Wonder Booth Johannesburg Photography Studio. It means it would also enjoy web marketing already done also since the search engine optimization is already live on Google. However, we also felt like it would hurt the general premium brand of the photography studio. As a premium wedding photography service, we didn’t want to dilute our services by being perceived as a “one-stop shop.” you'll need to weigh these factors in making this decision.
The Result and also the Future
While it’s still in its infancy, we’ve officially Wonder Booth Photobooth Hire in Johannesburg & Pretoria. Our primary marketing strategies are getting to include SEO, Social Networking, Word-of-Mouth, and Referrals. We’ve completed our first few gigs with a couple of more booked within the coming months. Wish us luck! We’re doing quite the same for you SLR Loungers.