Photo Booth vs. Digital Wedding Cameras

"We considered getting a photo booth, but when we looked at the cost and risks of renting one, we quickly started looking for alternatives. Digital wedding cameras cost about 300% less, were a lot simplier, and could do a lot more. Choosing digital wedding cameras over a photo booth was no brainer for our wedding." - Angela B., Bride

Summary: A photo booth is more complex, expensive, risky, and limited than a new “out of the box” wedding reception photography alternative: digital wedding cameras.

Read This If: You are thinking about photo booth rental for your wedding and would like to save $1,500 while getting more pictures with less hassle.

Introduction

Photo booths are a long standing wedding reception novelty, but brides and grooms across the country are moving away from photo booths thanks to a simpler, cheaper, safer, and more flexible alternative: digital wedding cameras.

Both photo booths and digital wedding cameras are all about capturing fun pictures of friends and family at your wedding reception, but digital wedding cameras capture more wedding pictures for four times less than a photo booth with less hassle and risk.

In the rest of this article we will do a simple comparison of photo booths and digital wedding cameras to help you make the best selection for your wedding reception. Whether you are thinking specifically about renting a photo booth for your wedding reception or just thinking about how you will capture fun pictures of your friends and family at your wedding reception, read on.

The Photo Booth

A photo booth is basically a camera in a big box. You go into the big box with friends, the camera takes a few pictures, and then you pick-up the strip of photos. Just like when we were five and had more fun with the big box a birthday gift came in than with the gift itself, the fun of a photo booth is more about the big box than it is about the pictures. The question to ask yourself is simply: “Is the big box worth it?”

The big box certainly used to be when photo booths were first introduced in 1925. Back then, the photo booth was the only way to quickly get pictures. Today with cell phones cameras, digital cameras, professional photographers, and digital wedding cameras you have a lot of “out of the box” wedding reception photography options.

The important question to ask yourself today is not “Are photo booths fun?” of course they are. Instead, ask yourself, “Is the big box so much more fun than the alternative that it is worth thousands of additional dollars and a lot of complexity and risk at my wedding reception?”

To help you answer that question, let’s talk about the new alternative to the photo booth: digital wedding cameras.

Digital Wedding Cameras

Think of digital wedding cameras like ten photo booths without the big box. Just like the photo booth your friends and family take and view fun picture from your wedding reception; only without the big box.

Video: How Digital Wedding Cameras Work

In a bit more detail:

1. You reserve ten digital wedding cameras online and the cameras arrive in the mail the day before your wedding
2. You give the digital wedding cameras out to trusted friends and family who capture fun wedding reception pictures and then return the cameras to you
3. You ship the digital wedding cameras back and in about a week you and your friends and family download, print, and share all of your wedding pictures from your wedding picture sharing website, for free

Just like a photo booth you and all of your wedding guests get fun wedding reception pictures, but unlike a photo booth, digital wedding cameras are simple, cheap, safe, and flexible.

Video: How Your Wedding Picture Sharing Website Works

Simple

When you rent a photo booth, you also rent an “attendant” that comes along with the photo booth. I don’t know about you but when something requires on-site support staff, I have to wonder how simple it can be. And this says nothing about setting-up and tearing-down the photo booth.

Imagine your wedding day. You literally have about a million things going on. Your mom is asking you all sorts of questions, three family members have gotten lost, and on top of that one of your vendors just called you to let you know that they are sick and cannot make your wedding. All of a sudden, you feel your cell phone vibrating in your pocket, pick it up, and it’s the photo booth delivery service needing you to get them into your wedding reception site and to tell them where to set everything up. Not so simple!

Now what about your actual wedding reception? Unless you have three or four thousand dollars to spare, you will only rent a photo booth for about four hours, and it will arrive two hours before your reception so that the “attendant” has time to set it up. This means that the photo booth will need to be torn down just two hours into your wedding reception. Is this something you want to deal with during your wedding reception?! No way, but what alternative do you have?

Digital wedding cameras. They are guaranteed to arrive in the mail the day before your wedding reception and you do not have to ship them back in the prepaid mailing case for two days after your wedding. A week later a CD ships to you with all of your wedding reception pictures on it and your friends and family can download and print all of your pictures for free on your website. You get cameras. You give cameras. You get pictures. It does not get much simpler than that.

Video: John`s Experience with Digital Wedding Cameras

Cost

After you pay for delivery costs, setup costs, and staffing costs, renting a photo booth for four hours is about $2,000. Put differently, having a camera in a big box for part of your wedding reception is about the same price as your honeymoon.

What about digital wedding cameras? Once you factor in: shipping, all of your pictures on a CD, a website where your guests can get your wedding pictures for free and even upload their own, and 100% damage insurance, renting ten digital wedding cameras for four days costs exactly $495.

Put differently, you can get ten digital cameras in a small prepaid shipping box for four days instead of one camera in a big box for one day, for $495 instead of $2,000. I say take the extra $1,500, extend your honeymoon a few days, and enjoy the website and CD created from your digital wedding cameras when you get back.

Risk

Anytime you rent anything you should think about what happens if it breaks. If you rent a hotel room, and a lamp gets broken, then your credit card gets charged $200. If you rent a movie, and it gets scratched, nothing happens. If you rent a photo booth, and it breaks, then you have a $7,000 replacement fee to deal with. If you rent digital wedding cameras, and one of them gets broken, then nothing happens. All the digital wedding cameras are fully damage insured. If one gets dropped and breaks in half, as long as both halves are retuned, you do not get charged anything.

If you do not want to risk being forced to buy a $7,000 photo booth right after your wedding, then digital wedding cameras are a safer bet for your wedding reception photos.

Flexibility

Like a lot of things in life, the photo booth’s biggest strength is also its biggest weakness: the big box. It is definitely fun to get into the big box, but that’s just it, you have to get into the big box if you want wedding reception pictures. Unless your friends and family get into the box, nobody gets any pictures.

More importantly, you can only do so much in a box. You can’t toss your bouquet in the box. You can’t give a toast in the box. And you can’t have your first dance in the box. If you want pictures from any of these wedding reception moments, then get out of the box

Digital wedding cameras can go everywhere you can go, everywhere your friends and family can go, and everywhere a photo booth cannot go. And with each digital wedding camera capable of taking over 450 photos and/or 15 minutes of video, once you get out of the box, there is nothing that digital wedding cameras cannot capture.

So while it is definitely fun to get into a big box, if you have any desire to get wedding reception pictures outside of that box, then digital wedding cameras may be a better choice for your wedding reception.

Video: Christina`s Experience with Digital Wedding Cameras

Conclusion

A photo booth is definitely fun, but so are digital wedding cameras. If you can do without the big box you can save yourself a lot of hassle, money, risk, and get a lot more pictures of wedding reception with digital wedding cameras.

-Jonathan Bailor

PS You may also want to check out the handy Wedding Photography Quiz which helps you easily pick the best photography option for your wedding.

 

About the Author: Jonathan Bailor is the Managing Partner of the premier affordable wedding photography service CameraRenter. 

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