When it comes to photo booths, it’s crucial to learn how to take a good photo. Not only will this make your guests happy, but it will make your life easier because everything about getting a good photo booth picture can be easily controlled and repeated at every event. Having this level of consistency will make things easier on you and your team and will more easily lead to repeat customers who want the same exact experience as the last time. And it’s soooo easy to accomplish once you understand how! Before diving in, here’s a few things you’re going to need in order to take better pictures with your photo booth:
Necessary equipment:
- Strobe Flash: Off camera studio flash. Flash with manual power adjustments are best for finetuning your photos, but not 100% necessary in every scenario. I highly recommend (and personally use) the Digibee DB400 by Paul Buff. Some speedlights are very good and can be used in the proper scenarios, but in general, use a studio flash where possible.
- Diffuser: A bounce umbrella is going to be your best friend here. Get a white shoot-through umbrella or an opaque bounce umbrella (33” works great). You’ll use it as bounce lighting so the ‘bottom’ portion faces towards guests at a 45-degree angle, with the flash firing into the umbrella.
- Camera DSLR or Mirrorless with Manual mode (any lens is fine): Duh.
What’s not necessary:
- 10 years of photography experience: I promise, after you read this, you’ll be an expert and will love “Manual” mode.
- Expensive lenses: The most basic kit lens is how we produce our most desired photo booth Glam look. Trust me, the lens does not matter AT ALL for a photo booth, unless you want to capture a specific level of distortion, or distance.
- Light meters, white balance cards, and other complicated photography equipment. Just one flash, and one small umbrella will get you to photo booth perfection.
Here are the kinds of photos you should be getting after reading this guide (don’t mind the image compression from my website)
First of all, let’s discuss what makes for a good photo booth photo. And I don’t mean subjectively. The perfect photo booth picture can certainly be influenced by the guest, and proper cropping of the photo is absolutely a good idea. But the perfect photo booth photo has only three things you need to get right 1) M-mode (ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed) 2) Proper lighting and 3) Proper white balance. See, told you this would be easy!
Let’s dive into each of these elements below:
1) Shooting in M-mode (Proper ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed)
Remember I said that you would need a camera with Manual mode? Take a deep breath, we are about to eliminate that fear of the dreaded “M” and turn it into your favorite mode. Turn on your camera, dial it to M, and start with these basic settings (don’t worry, we’ll cover each one in depth after):
Recommended indoor shooting settings
Aperture: F11
ISO: 400 (or 800 if you are using a low-powered flash or shooting in a pitch-black room)
Shutter Speed: 1/125
White Balance: Daylight
Flash: Medium/Medium High Power
Before we go further, let’s talk about what each of these settings does:
Aperture
Aperture refers to how open or closed the lens to your camera is and essentially, how much light it can let in at any given moment. It’s also referred to as “F-stop” in case you are wondering. Think of aperture like your eyelids. If you squint tightly, your eyes can only see so much, and can only let in a little light (which is why this method works great on a sunny day to shield your eyes). Now more literally, your pupil IS an aperture, adjusting to the amount of light nearby to make sure you can see without being blinded (have a look at your pupil size after being in a dark/bright area), but the eyelid example is one you can directly control, so I figured it makes a bit more sense in this illustration.
The way the aperture adjustment works on a camera is this: The lower the number, the more OPEN the aperture. And the higher the number, the more CLOSED the aperture. In general aperture numbers usually range from 1.4 to 22 (but could be more/less depending on the lens and zoom distance).
The important thing to remember is this: If you need more light in the photo, without making any chances to the external available lighting, simply opening your aperture (setting a lower/smaller value) will brighten your photo. And the reverse is true if the photo is too bright – simply close the aperture (setting a higher/larger value).
Keeping Things in Focus (literally)
Now, there is an additional consideration that needs to be made in the proper aperture selection, and that’s focus. Have you ever taken a picture and noticed some guests are fully in focus and others are blurred out? Nice effect for solo portraits, but not so great for groups of guests who all want to be the star of their photos. The reason for this is due to the depth of field effect introduced by the aperture value. The lower the aperture value, the more limited your focal range, resulting in a more contrasted depth of field. And the higher the aperture value, the broader your focal range, resulting in a less contrasted depth of field. Simply put, a higher value will keep more of your guests in full focus – and is generally how you should be shooting in any photo booth setting.
So what is a good aperture value for photo booths?
F11. The reason I recommend this setting as a perfect starting point is two-fold. 1) It provides a high enough value for sharp in-focus shooting across your guests in majority of scenarios, and 2) It generally provides enough light to the camera without needing to fire your flash at full brightness; while ensuring you are in control of the lighting (and not affected by ambient lights) – I cover this in the Photo Booth Lighting section below.
ISO
Inside your camera, there is a ‘magic sensor’ that processes your images from real life into digital (or negatives, if you’re old school). The ISO affects this sensor by impacting how sensitive it is to the light coming in. A higher ISO value means an extremely sensitive sensor, and a lower ISO value means a less sensitive sensor. Let’s go back to our eye example. On a bright sunny day, try turning off the lights and closing your eyes for a minute or donning a pair of dark sunglasses. Now, step outside in the sun and immediately open your eyes all the way (don’t forget to take off the shades). I’m guessing that hurt a bit, and at the very least momentarily blinded you. This is because by closing your eyes and remaining in the dark, the ISO of your eyes essentially adjusted to be super high (aka, highly sensitive). So, when you opened your eyes moments later, they were super sensitive to the incoming light, as they had just adjusted to seeing in the dark. Likewise, if you want to reverse this experiment, stay outside with your eyes open for a while, and then go into a dark or dimly light room. It will probably take a minute to see anything, because your eyes just did the reverse, effectively decreasing the ISO so they were less sensitive to light.
Now you might be asking, why not just shoot with the ISO all the way up all the time, to eliminate or reduce the need for flash entirely? Honestly, it’s something many photographers do, and for good reason! But in the world of photo booths, it’s not a great idea, and here’s why:
The higher the ISO the grainier the image. Try it, shoot with ISO 12800 or whatever the highest value is on your camera. The resulting photo will likely look like it was taken in a dust storm.
When shooting in a photo booth, a lower ISO is always the best choice, as it results in the clearest possible photos.
So what’s a good ISO value for photo booths?
400. I recommend starting here as it’s a low-ISO value that gives you a light boost, without affecting image quality. 800 can also be used in slightly darker scenarios, or where your flash is already firing at/near full power and it’s still not quite bright enough. Any higher than this, and you should explore your other settings or think about getting a brighter flash.
Shutter Speed
Shutter speed refers to how long the shutter remains open. In our anatomy example, think of this like blinking. If you close your eyes (aka the default state), then open them for 1-second, you have a 1-second shutter speed. If you open them for 1/250 of a second, then you have a 1/250 shutter speed, etc. Now the difference between our eyes (and our brain) and your camera, is our eyes were meant to be open processing information real time. Whereas a camera’s sensor is only meant to capture information for a moment in time. Having this shutter speed open for longer than needed results in light continuing to flood the camera’s sensor and will generally result in motion-blurred pictures and photos that are too bright.
So you say, great, let’s set it as high as it can go! Well…not so fast. If you set the camera’s shutter speed to the highest setting, you’ll capture a crazy sharp shot (ideal for sports photography), but you need an insane amount of lighting (i.e. outdoors and high ISO) and there’s an additional caveat: It is not compatible with flash.
When using a photo booth, you are relying on your flash as your primary (and often only) source of light. Since your flash fires off only for a moment, your camera needs to capture this light at precisely the right time. If it ‘blinks’ too fast, then the flash won’t have had a chance to fire (or won’t finish firing), resulting in a photo that has white bars through parts of the image, or is black on the top/bottom.
So what is a good Shutter Speed for photo booths?
1/125. This shutter speed works with almost every flash (check yours just to be safe), and results in crisp, clear photos, that capture the moment without delay. You can easily get shots of guests jumping in the air, doing a hair whip, or whatever, without worrying about blurry photos.
The nice thing about shutter speed in the photo booth, is it only ever really needs to be set once, unless you are doing something creative like light painting.
2) Proper Photo Booth Lighting
Proper lighting consists of understanding how light works, and how it doesn’t. Just like our eyes, in order for the camera to see the scene and take a picture, light is necessary. However, more light is not always better. In a photo booth setting, our goal is controlled lighting. In fact, this is one of the things that makes photo booth photography so great – you can get studio results every single time, as long as you know how to control the light. So, let’s get to the point – how do you control the light? The first step to controlling lighting is to eliminate it completely. Go ahead and turn your flash off, ambient lighting is ok and shouldn’t impact our results.
Tip: Shooting outside while the sun is out? See the notes at the end of this guide for some helpful outdoor shooting tips.
Now, with your camera on Manual mode, (and set to the starter settings at the beginning of the previous section) take a picture! The end-result should be a nice black photo with little to no detail visible. Hurray! You are one step closer to photo perfection. How does this help, you ask? Well, if we can take a photo in the dark, this proves that none of the ambient lighting is going to affect our photo. We are now in total control of the output based on whatever light source(s) we provide.
Ok, now turn your flash on and dial it to medium brightness. If you are using a cheaper flash without power adjustments, or with only a couple of power options, try the lowest setting first. Snap another picture. How’s that look? Your goal here is to fully light the scene, so you may need to increase your flash brightness bit by bit until you get your desired look. It’s really that simple at this point.
Now, what if your flash is maxed out (or near maxed out) and it’s still not quite bright enough? Go back one step to the camera aperture and ISO, and let’s make some minor adjustments there first.
Assuming you are using the default settings I provided, try turning off your flash and opening the aperture a bit more to 9. Then snap another picture. The result should still be quite dark. If needed, you can also bump the ISO up to the next level (no more than 1000). Now turn on your flash and take another picture. The results should be near perfect, or if anything, too bright. Now simply dial your flash down a bit or go back and adjust just one setting at a time (aperture OR ISO) until you get the lighting just right. FYI, I tend to shoot slightly overexposed (a little brighter than needed) because I think it results in an overall better-looking photo, but this is mostly personal preference.
If you are still struggling, check to make sure your flash is not on some kind of auto mode where it’s changing the power or shooting distance without your input.
Oh, and a tip for dummies (it happens to the best of us): Make sure your flash is not covered by a protective cap, etc. 🤦♂️ <- been there done that.
Lighting the Scene
One other essential tip for photo booth shooting is having a constant light source to help your camera focus (and to help guests see in the dark). Most medium/high end studio strobes accomplish this with a built-in modelling light, but if yours doesn’t, you should consider upgrading. This will cut down on the pieces of equipment at your event, while keeping everything nicely housed in a minimal way (and off the floor).
3) Proper White Balance
Now this brings us to the last element of the perfect photo booth photo. White Balance.
White Balance is just like it sounds, it’s a balance to help the camera determine what is white and what’s not. And its adjustments are generally by scene (Cloudy, Sunny, Flash, etc) but are more literally defined using Kelvin levels (along with some manual color adjustments). The Kelvin scale basically measures temperature, where 10,000k is bluer/cooler and a lower Kelvin of 1500k is yellower/warmer. If you have every purchased light bulbs for your house, you probably got something on the lower end of that spectrum for a warmer light (unless you are a psychopath). And professional strobes/flash tends to shoot at a level similar to the sun/being outdoors (generally around 5500k).
Unfortunately, our camera is not always smart enough to know what’s true white (and arguably, neither are we). But we can generally get a sense of what’s wrong when a photo looks too yellow, or too blue. This is where professional photographers will pull out the grey card (a white balance sheet), or a light meter to understand exactly what lighting conditions are needing to be adjusted for the perfect shot.
But, as mentioned before, the great thing about photo booths is that we get to control the lighting.
So what’s a good White Balance for photo booths?
Daylight or Flash. I tend to shoot in Daylight because I prefer a photo that is slightly warmer, vs one that is slightly cooler. But Flash will typically produce the most accurate results. If anything, Daylight mode makes guests look more naturally tan, than ghostly. Of course, if you prefer, you can easily set your camera to manual white balance and adjust up or down starting around 5500k depending on how cool/blue or yellow/warm your photos are coming out.
If needed, you can also fine tune your White Balance further by manually by adjusting the color temperature, similar to a filter on the photos. These adjustments are generally controlled by manually choosing a color closer to blue, amber, magenta, or green on your camera to shift the colors in one direction or another (more amber less blue, or more green less magenta, etc). This can be helpful if you want to offset the general colors, in case for instance your backdrop is giving off purple/blue hues (which it will do, because they are seldom ‘true white’)
What to consider when shooting outdoors with your photo booth?
I’ll be creating a separate article soon about helpful tips and tricks for shooting outdoors, but this one is not easy and should generally be avoided when possible. Shooting outdoors itself is not a problem, but the sun is! Remember I said the key to great photos is controlling the lighting? Well, the sun is one light source you simply can’t control, but there are a few things you can do to take better pictures outdoors, including adjusting manual settings based on what we’ve covered. Here is a quick rundown of my ideal outdoor shooting settings and tips:
Recommended outdoor shooting settings
Aperture: F15+
ISO: 100
Shutter Speed: 1/125 (possibly higher if it’s full sunshine and you don’t need flash)
White Balance: Daylight
Flash: Lowest power needed
Whenever possible, try to make sure the area where guests will be (backdrop included) is 100% shaded. If not, there is NO way to get a great photo, as you need to balance two levels of lighting (shade and sun), which is impossible without post-editing. As long as you are in the shade, you can reduce your flash, and adjust your Manual settings to create great-looking photos. Just keep an eye out as time goes on, since you may need to decrease/increase the flash brightness or your camera aperture & ISO as the sun rises/sets and the scene gets brighter/darker.
Photo Booth Photography Cheat Sheet
Enter: The exposure triangle. This nifty graphic is a great way to understand how each of the elements (ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed) work together to produce a photo, and what the effect of each one does on the upper/lower ends of each setting. It’s a great way to quickly reference and understand the effects of modifying one or more value and when it’s appropriate for a given shooting scenario. But in the photo booth world, you probably won’t stray much from your initial settings, other than a couple minor tweaks here and there (outdoors excluded).
Hope this helps! Have something you’d like to see more information on that you want covered on Photo Booth Hustle? Shoot me an email and let me know what you’re looking for.
Also, be sure to join our free Photo Booth Community on Facebook to stay connected with other owner’s and industry experts like myself.
Happy Boothing!
-Matthew
