Choosing the Right Photo Booth Company: What to Ask Before You Book

Not all photo booths are created equal. A buyer's guide to vetting a photo booth company — insurance, real equipment versus a tripod and a printer, and the print-speed math hiding behind unlimited prints.

Photo booths are still one of the easiest yeses on an event plan. Weddings, quinceañeras, school reunions, charity galas, expos, bar and bat mitzvahs, corporate parties — put one in the room and people line up for it, and for good reason! Instant prints plus memories that should last a lifetime is a sure-fire way to have a blast and give your guests something to remember.

Here's the part nobody warns you about. So many "photo booths" have popped up around Tucson that picking the right vendor has become a genuinely daunting task — and the easiest way to get it wrong is to sort the quotes by price and assume all booths are created equal.

They aren't. Here are the three things we'd check before signing anything.

Tip 1: Do Your Research Before You Ask "How Much?"

When you first consider renting a photo booth, the question that jumps to mind is almost always "How much does it cost?" It's a valid question. It just shouldn't be the first one.

Start with who you're actually dealing with. Some vendors are photography companies running a booth on the side. Some are a person with a tripod, a camera, and a printer that they call a booth. Some are real photo booth companies that don't deal well with children at parties, have been known to show up late, or aren't flexible enough to work with your other vendors and your schedule.

And here's the one most people never think to ask: are they insured? Many venues require every vendor on site to carry at least $1 million in coverage. Plenty of the companies bidding on your event are not.

At Flashbulb Memories, we seek to build a lasting reputation with everyone — which is why we'd rather you read what our clients actually say than take our word for it. We put our due diligence into building the booth and sourcing the right equipment to produce quality pictures and prints (keep reading for more), and the people who work with our company are dedicated to customer service above everything else. They genuinely love to make people happy. Oh, and we're fully insured.

Tip 2: Not All Booths Are Created Equal (And Neither Are the Photos)

Typically, the majority of companies these days calling themselves a "photo booth" company are anything but. What shows up is a simple tripod setup surrounded by loose gear: a bulky computer, flash stands, cheap lightbulbs and strobes, big flash modifiers, a cheap camera, and a personal printer. If you really wanted to, you could replicate that entire setup from Amazon purchases for under $350.

One of our missions was to create a booth that wouldn't take away from the experience of the event itself. So ours was custom crafted with a sleek, modern design and enhanced with real equipment: an 18mp DSLR camera, a professional studio strobe, a DNP DS-40 dye-sub printer, a completely custom photo booth enclosure, hand-made sequin backdrops, hand-selected props, and professionally designed photo templates. Other than our amazing service, you're getting close to $10k worth of equipment aimed at one job — making your photos spectacular.

What Does This Mean for You?

Six things our classic photo booth hands you that the typical setup can't:

1. Perfectly-lit photos every single time, just like you'd get at a studio photo shoot.
2. A booth that blends into your event instead of being an eyesore.
3. 300 DPI prints, printed and cut automatically within 10 seconds, rated to last 50 years.
4. Free, full-resolution digital files of both your prints and the original photos, without watermarks.
5. Templates that enhance the photo itself and are unique to your event.
6. Re-usable USB drives with your photos instead of a useless CD copy.

Tip 3: Do the Math on "Unlimited Prints"

The mistake we see most often is booking a competitor because they advertise unlimited prints at no extra cost. (Not to be confused with unlimited photos, which should be included with every booth company.)

Almost every company offering that at a low price can do it for one reason: they're running sub-par equipment, and they know your guests will never actually get unlimited anything. Here's the math.

The average print time on those setups is 85 seconds — and that's before anyone cuts the strips in half. Add the roughly 15 seconds it takes guests to get through the booth and reach the point where the print starts, and a single trip costs 100 seconds.

A two-hour event is 7,200 seconds. 7,200 ÷ 100 = 72.

So even with the line completely jam-packed the entire time and no cutting of strips required, that booth tops out at an absolute maximum of 72 prints.

With our booth, your photos are taken and your prints delivered within 25 seconds — 15 seconds of booth time plus a 10-second print. Run it again: 7,200 ÷ 25 = 288. Same two hours, four times as many prints.

So, once again, before jumping the gun on hiring your photo booth company — in Tucson, up in Phoenix, or wherever your event lands — ask yourself what you are really getting for the price you pay. Ask about the insurance. Ask what's actually inside the booth. Ask how fast a print comes out the other side. The cheapest quote and the best booth almost never share a phone number.