Photo booth advice
1. Get dressed up
A good selection of costumes can bring a shoot like this to life, as well as add a little extra colour to your photos. Make sure there's plenty to choose from or alternatively, why not add a chalkboard for guests to write messages on.
2. Use a photo booth kit
A simple photo booth set with cards attached to sticks is a fun, inexpensive option. Kits like this can be bought online. They usually come packed flat, so you have to stick the cards to the sticks. We were rather surprised at how good they looked in the photos.
3. Lenses and framing
A fairly wide focal length is best for this kind of shoot – our Tamron 17-55mm zoom here was set to 21mm (on a crop-sensor Canon EOS Rebel T6i / 750D). Frame a little loosely as your guests may not always manage to get into the perfect position – you can always crop in tighter later on.
4. Extend Auto Power-off
We don’t want the camera to turn itself off so go into the menu and delay the auto power-off to 15 minutes. You might also want to change the image review time to 4 secs so that your guests have enough time to check out the image once it’s been shot.
5. Flip your screen
It’ll make it easier for the guests if they can see themselves while shooting, so it helps if, like the EOS 750D here, your camera has a flip-out screen. If not, you could perhaps hook your DSLR up to a tablet or TV and display the Live View feed. When your camera is in Manual mode, Live View uses ‘exposure simulation’ to show how the scene will look. But it only meters the ambient light and doesn’t account for the Speedlite, so the feed might be very dark. Consider disabling exposure simulation for a clearer picture, if your DSLR has this option.
