4x6 Printer for Photobooth

My wife and I shoot weddings, and she has decided we should offer a photobooth, so here I am putting together a spreadsheet to see if its a viable option. What I am need of is advise on a printer to use. The software I am looking at using 4x6 prints, that then get cut in half to make 2x6 strips, one will go in a book for the wedding couple the other to the guest.

So what would you suggest for a printer. I do not need it for anything other then this booth.

Ha ha, funny you should post this - I'm doing a photobooth in a few hours, printing 4x6s with my big ol' Pixma Pro 9000 MKII. I've done it a few times in the past and I wouldn't recommend it


Your big considerations are:
- Speed of printing
- Cost per print
- Reliability/backup

Some people say you have to have a dye-sub for printing speed. But the hardware is expensive and the cost per print is high, and having an identical backup just doubles your cost.

Some people use two identical cheap-but-decent inkjets and spool between the two. Keep a third identical one under the table in case one of the two breaks. Probably still cheaper for three little inkjets than one dye-sub, and cost-per-print is very small if you use the continuous ink systems.


For my needs, the Pixma 9000 is adequate. Heavy and clunky, not really fast, cost per print is low enough to be manageable (especially using LD inks instead of Canon). It's not unusual that I have to tell people "come back in 5 minutes for your prints." If photobooth business picks up enough to justify it, I'll find a better solution, but for only doing it a couple times per year it works for me.

Are you able to set up spooling with any printers? Or only specific ones?

I've been ogling the Epson PictureMate Charm for a while, but I don't know how efficient it is in terms of ink.

So in a very quick search while on break I came across the Canon Selphy CP910 its a Dye Sub printer for under $100 (at that price I can buy 2 or 3), I would just like to find out if I can pool them to increase the print speed. Per print price is kinda high at about 36 cents each.

Remember that the manufacturers make essentially no money on the printer, but on the consumables.

Here's a comparison: http://www.kerribradfo​rd.com …turemate-charm-vs-selphy/

The downside to the picture mate from what I can see is that its inkjet and takes drying time after the print comes out. Non the less I am doing some cost comparisons now.

Going off just the paper/ink replacement packs the Charm is about 27 cents a photo while the Selphy is 31 cents a photo if buying from Amazon. The buy in price on the Charm is double the Selphy as well. Last difference is the Selphy is Dye Sub while the Charm is inkjet so the photos coming out of the Selphy are dry and ready to be given to the "client" right away.

What I didn't know till I saw that review, but now concerns me is that the Selphy is not a true 4x6.

I saw the Selphy being used for a booth event, (http://hensel.eu …deo/filmfest-munich-2014/) and that piqued my interest in it but I'm not so sure. So, whatever you decide to go with, please come back and post your experiences.

Alveric wrote in post #17603498
What I didn't know till I saw that review, but now concerns me is that the Selphy is not a true 4x6.

I saw the Selphy being used for a booth event, (http://hensel.eu …deo/filmfest-munich-2014/) and that piqued my interest in it but I'm not so sure. So, whatever you decide to go with, please come back and post your experiences.

I will for sure come back and report, it might be a bit before we bite the bullet and purchase the items needed. Looking at the review the difference in the photos was so small, I would like to know just how much smaller it really is. I may see if the printer or paper is in stock anyplace local and go have a look. Since we will be cutting the print in half anyways its probably not a huge issue. Now if I can figure out how to set them up in a printer pool I would be set.

Stay away from the individual dye sub printers, they are way too slow and too costly.

I started with inkjets, then switched to expensive dye subs and have now come back to inkjets.

My current set up is this:

2 canon PIXMA MG5520 printers: http://www.amazon.com …oh_aui_detailpa​ge_o07_s01

DlsrBooth Software: http://dslrbooth.com/

3rd party ink: http://www.amazon.com …oh_aui_detailpa​ge_o07_s00

With this setup you could get started for less than $400. I use a MacBook Pro laptop and all of this works flawlessly. I have tried MANY combinations over the last 3 years and have suffered through a lot of headaches! The only change I would make is that if I were doing a lot of these photobooths I would go back to DyeSub printer, but they are about $1000 each and the media kits are about $300, so the upfront cost is pretty high.

The Mac OSX makes it so easy to create printer pools and it really speeds up the printing process so the inkjet printers are plenty fast enough.

Littlejon Dsgn wrote in post #17603522
I will for sure come back and report, it might be a bit before we bite the bullet and purchase the items needed. Looking at the review the difference in the photos was so small, I would like to know just how much smaller it really is. I may see if the printer or paper is in stock anyplace local and go have a look. Since we will be cutting the print in half anyways its probably not a huge issue. Now if I can figure out how to set them up in a printer pool I would be set.

What software and computer are you using?

ShotByTom wrote in post #17604525
What software and computer are you using?

Thank you for your advice, I had not seen that printer, it is in the same price which would allow my to pick up 2-3 of them (I do not want just one in case it goes down during an event). I had planned to download the trial of DSLRBooth as it looked like the program we were going to use.

If possible I want to run it from my laptop which is running windows.

ShotByTom wrote in post #17604523
Stay away from the individual dye sub printers, they are way too slow and too costly.

I started with inkjets, then switched to expensive dye subs and have now come back to inkjets.

My current set up is this:

2 canon PIXMA MG5520 printers: http://www.amazon.com …oh_aui_detailpa​ge_o07_s01

DlsrBooth Software: http://dslrbooth.com/

3rd party ink: http://www.amazon.com …oh_aui_detailpa​ge_o07_s00

With this setup you could get started for less than $400. I use a MacBook Pro laptop and all of this works flawlessly. I have tried MANY combinations over the last 3 years and have suffered through a lot of headaches! The only change I would make is that if I were doing a lot of these photobooths I would go back to DyeSub printer, but they are about $1000 each and the media kits are about $300, so the upfront cost is pretty high.

The Mac OSX makes it so easy to create printer pools and it really speeds up the printing process so the inkjet printers are plenty fast enough.

How many prints do you typically get out of a set of ink.

Little update:
In actual practice from Friday's event, I found the print speed of the Pixma Pro9000 to be about half that of the specs listed on Canon's site (60+ seconds for a 4x6, not 30 seconds). I worked for about 2.5 hours and printed about 150 4x6s. This includes a couple of brief pauses for swapping cartridges, not keeping the paper topped up, etc, but for practical purposes the printer was running nonstop the whole time. Print speed was definitely the bottleneck in my whole process.