Well if you are the consumer and reading this the decision is yours, does it matter to you? That is the question you have to answer for yourself. The argument has been made that cell phones are now the most popular way to create images for sharing and documenting life and those are no better than a webcam, in fact often the same parts. So where does that leave us, there are probably as many webcam photo booths available for rent as there are DSLRs… Now compare their lack of motion blur to the hands from the webcam, there just is no comparison in quality.
The two small boys int he images did not stop moving for the entire 20 seconds it took to take 4 images. The photos from the DSLR on the right are from my booth and I was there when these were taken. No you can not entirely eliminate motion blur with a dslr camera but you can come close. This means that 50% of the time they won’t stop moving when the picture is taken and it is not the fault of the person using the booth that there is massive amount of motion blur in the images, it is the fault of the vendor for not providing the proper tools!
That is what photo booths are about, enjoyment, if the client wanted a perfectly posed picture then they wouldn’t be hiring a photo booth.
Let’s be honest if you are reading this as a vendor or a consumer, people in a photo booth are there to have fun, they are not there to pose for a professional image, they are there to laugh, giggle, make faces, goof off, ENJOY THEMSELVES. I once saw a photo booth renter with a webcam bemoaning the fact that his customers couldn’t sit still for 20 seconds while the 4 images were taken so there would be no motion blur… All I could think was DO YOUR JOB PROPERLY! Once agian, webcams are cheap.īut the most damning problem that webcams have in my opinion is in the fact there is no flash, pathetic fstop and iris control if any and as a result when used in a photo booth environment they constantly show MOTION BLUR as exampled in the final image on the left with the hands. In the middle webcam image you can see some funky focus problems and loss of detail in the hair. Webcams are cheap and don’t have the same quality standards that even the cheapest DSLR has! On top of that you must continuously flood a webcam booth with bright light, where as a DSLR uses a one time flash. The main cause of these hot spots are 1 webcams have sensor chips smaller than a postage stamp, that aren’t intended for still imagery. While in the DSLR images on the right, it takes an arm only 5 inches from the flash before you get any hot spots in the image and even then I would point out that this is not a complete blowout of the image, unlike the webcam there is still definition, detail and it doesn’t look all that bad. In the top webcam image the facial features are suffering from sever hot spots circled in red, even though the subject is obviously standing at the back of the booth. Since the subjects are children I’ve thrown a guassian blur over the more identifiable areas but we still have can clearly see the differences between a webcam and a dslr.
The argument has been made that the webcams of today are just as good as a DSLR. Photo Booth camera equipment today breaks down into basically two distinct camps if you intend to build a booth with new equipment in it DSLR cameras vs the webcam. Yes they are only 1 inch in size if you are doing the nostalgic 2×6 photo strip, but even at 1″x1″ quality is noticeable!
One of the hot button questions facing photo booth renters and frankly in turn the consumer is the quality of the pictures shot by the photo booth.