Photobooths

I have a birthday party for a club owner at the end of the month. He's a friend of mine and I shoot his party every year. I did a smaller anniversary/Halloween party for a friend of mine the first weekend of November and everyone loved it. The issue is that even though that one was automated, it was set up so the photos were just in camera. They were edited and delivered to the couple to share after the party.

My basic setup was a camera on a tripod, a flash with beauty dish to light, and Pocket Wizards. One Pocket Wizard was set up for the guest to press the button then the timer on the camera would start and a photo would be taken.

How do I make this automated so the guest can see the photos and possibly send the photos to their FB, Twitter, Instagram, Etc? I have laptops and iPad, but I would prefer for the users to use an iPad fixed some where because I have a pretty sturdy case on in and a screen protector and would feel safer with a touch interface than having partygoers (who will be drinking, it's at a bar) trying to mess with a computer program, keyboard, and mouse.

So any suggestions on how to go about this?

I got everything working together with the trial.

dslrBooth was controlling the Nikon D750 and either let me trigger via the computer or via the camera. From there, it took 4 photos. After that it sent it to the Fotoshare app on the iPad with just the regular network connected. No Eye Fi card or camera network connection was needed.

The down sides: Everything costs money. This isn’t a onetime program/app purchase as I was led to believe. You can send the file via SMS/e-mail/air drop/FB/Twitter on the computer but to do SMS, you at least need a subscription through Twilio. That’s a cost based on how many messages you send, IIRC. With the iPad app you can do the same, but you need to subscribe to a different service through dslrBooth through the app store. That’s $8.00 a month and that’s for sending anything. It works right now, but with each message you send, it says you need to subscribe and has it real large across the top of the app. That’s even with e-mail, air drop, etc… I can kind of understand the texting charge (but there should be an option to let you use your own number and not make you go through their selected 3rd party service) but the fact that it’s gaudy and says it requires a subscription for e-mail, FB, twitter, and air-drop is something that turns me off.

Has anyone had experience with similar software that doesn’t charge to send photos over media that should be free like e-mail, air-drop (that’s just Bluetooth after all), FB, etc?

What about tethered to one of their iPads? I guess they'd have to have LR, but tell them to invest and it will work.

Darvon wrote in post #17327231
What about tethered to one of their iPads? I guess they'd have to have LR, but tell them to invest and it will work.

Who's iPad? The hosting venue?

The app works to show photos just fine, it just charges to send them. $8.00 a month isn't bad and can be cancelled if you don't use it some months (which this is not something I see myself using all the time right off the bat since it's a new service I'm adding). It just seems like a lot to keep up with to make this work. I was hoping that since a company put out the software, they would offer everything and not require you to use a third party service as well as a subscription if you use their iPad app on top of it.

I'm going to still look in to other software to see what's out there. SMS is neat but it's not needed. FB and e-mail would do. I do like that dslrBooth also includes air drop, Twitter, and other ways of sending the image. This would be an unattended booth, so I need to make it as easy and reliable as possible.

I've probably skim-read too quickly, but I'm not understanding the reason for all of the complication.

Tether the camera to a computer with a screen attached--instant gratification using 2 normal cables.

Supply everyone who has their photo taken a card with a predetermined url. After the event, upload all images so that they appear and are available to download via that url. If you want even more instantaneous ability for clients to share, automate the uploading process as the event proceeds so attendees can go to the url immediately to grab their photo. I don't know, though--is someone really going to want to take time out of their party time to download photos or worry about immediately being able to upload to their facebook ? And do you really want to worry about taking people's phone numbers / emails to send the images ?

Christopher Steven b wrote in post #17333428
I've probably skim-read too quickly, but I'm not understanding the reason for all of the complication.

Tether the camera to a computer with a screen attached--instant gratification using 2 normal cables.

Supply everyone who has their photo taken a card with a predetermined url. After the event, upload all images so that they appear and are available to download via that url. If you want even more instantaneous ability for clients to share, automate the uploading process as the event proceeds so attendees can go to the url immediately to grab their photo. I don't know, though--is someone really going to want to take time out of their party time to download photos or worry about immediately being able to upload to their facebook ? And do you really want to worry about taking people's phone numbers / emails to send the images ?

I suppose that would work. With the setup I posted though, it would alleviate me having to upload images and the people could send it where they wanted. The iPad is for the customer to review their image and send it without needing an attendant. I’m going to try and set up a trial for a party a friend is having this weekend to test it out.

I was at the company party for my day job this weekend, and the hired photo booth was using this service:
http://photopartyuploa​d.com/

That app was running on an iPad a few yards away from the photo booth. It worked well enough; my wife was able to use it to log into her Facebook account and share the photos immediately after they were taken, and it automatically logged out of her account as soon as she was done with the share.

They also had a HiTi printer making 2x6 strips, though it was dark and I didn't look for the specific model number of the printer.

This particular photobooth company will also make the images available later, either through their website, or through facebook, or by sending a disc to our office admin. I can't remember how they were delivered last year, I think we downloaded from the photobooth company's website, which may be powered by smugmug or something similar.
www.FotoBoxLive.com

Christopher Steven b wrote in post #17333428
I don't know, though--is someone really going to want to take time out of their party time to download photos or worry about immediately being able to upload to their facebook ?

Yes. It took about 90 seconds to log in on the iPad, select and upload a couple of photo strips, and log back out. People were using it.

As a user, my only complaint - and this is very minor - is that it posted an image the 4x6 double-strip, not the 2x6 individual strip print, nor the individual photos from the strip.

Screenshot from the facebook app on my phone, looking at the image she posted from the photobooth app at the party:

After reading those rate, $8.00 a month isn't bad. $300 a month for unlimited uploads? Geeze...

When you're getting $1500 per event, and doing several events per week, and using that feature to differentiate yourself from your competitors, $300/mo seems much more reasonable.

The first test went over great. I'm going to have to eventually get a mobile hotspot or see if my iPad will word with the mobile contract. I also want to build a more permanent booth.