Photobooth Lens - Focal Length?

Hi ,

This is a very quick but silly question I suppose.

My camera is a Canon crop sensor 1.6x.

What do you think the best focal length for lens to be used in Photobooth at wedding event? Considering that the distance from the camera and objects will be quite close.

re the aperture, correct me if i am wrong, I don't think we need a wide aperture considering I would want everything to be in focus and no bokeh required.

Do you reckon Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 will be a good candidate?

I'd prob go a 35 or 50.

11-16 being so wide that it might lead to distortion / elongation in the centre of the image making peoples features look disproporationate

i use the tokina 12-24
normally set it at f14 to get everything in focus from 2ft+

For a crop, the sigma 30mm should be great. Aperture I would use f/8-f/11 depends on what kind of lighting setup.

kakegawa wrote in post #14039336
Considering that the distance from the camera and objects will be quite close.

How close is "quite close"? If the subject(s) is/are too close to the camera, you will be causing perspective distortion (apparent large noses, etc.) which the subjects will not appreciate.

Keep the subject(s) at least five feet from the camera and folks should be reasonably happy with the results.

Figure out the camera-to-subject distance that you can set up and then play with lenses that you have to determine the "best" focal length to use. Nobody here can help you without knowing two things - camera-to-subject distance and how much of the subjects you intend to capture in the frame (along with how many folks in the image).

SkipD wrote in post #14039760
Figure out the camera-to-subject distance that you can set up and then play with lenses that you have to determine the "best" focal length to use. Nobody here can help you without knowing two things - camera-to-subject distance and how much of the subjects you intend to capture in the frame (along with how many folks in the image).

1. As you suggested, camera to subject distance = 5 feet.
2. 2 to 5 folks in the image.

As you might notice, photobooth in wedding, the number of folks can vary. 8 piece of live band may want to be captured in 1 image and bridal party of 6 may want to be captured in 1 image. or perhaps, it'll be couple. but rules of thumb, i would say 2 to max of 5 people in the image.

kakegawa wrote in post #14039879
1. As you suggested, camera to subject distance = 5 feet.
2. 2 to 5 folks in the image.

As you might notice, photobooth in wedding, the number of folks can vary. 8 piece of live band may want to be captured in 1 image and bridal party of 6 may want to be captured in 1 image. or perhaps, it'll be couple. but rules of thumb, i would say 2 to max of 5 people in the image.

For any more than two people with fairly tight framing, I would say that you would want to get the camera out to at least 10 feet from the subjects. There's no way I would try to squeeze five to eight folks into the scene by using a short focal length. That would cause problems with things around the edges of the image being distorted. Not only that, but lighting that's arranged for one or two people surely won't work for groups of five to eight.

Though I know nothing about your venue, I cannot imagine why you couldn't arrange things so that you could move the camera and lighting back for the occasional longer shot.

I've found that the 50mm on a crop body doesn't work well in a photobooth with the subjects 5ft from the camera as you are unable to fit more then one person in the image. I'm using the 18-55 kit lens in my booth and find that somewhere in the 24-35 mm range works the best.

robn70 wrote in post #14041777
I've found that the 50mm on a crop body doesn't work well in a photobooth with the subjects 5ft from the camera as you are unable to fit more then one person in the image. I'm using the 18-55 kit lens in my booth and find that somewhere in the 24-35 mm range works the best.

thanks robn70. If you think 24-355 mm works the best, I might be getting 24-70L f2.8, which works out to be 38.4-112 in crop body. I will still give it a shot still, perhaps rent it and then setup my booth and we'll see, however I appreciate yall inputs on this. Thanks