What Is The Most Common Lie...
...Told By Photo Booth Renal Companies?
It Could Be Costing You More Than You Think
One term used by photo booth rental companies misleads more customers than any other. This information will be significant in finding out what’s different from one rental company to the next, and will help you select the best option for your event.
The deceptive practice is use of the term “Unlimited Use”.
If you ask 5 different companies, they will all say their service is Unlimited, but in hiring them you are likely to get 5 different outcomes.
By not discussing what “Unlimited” actually includes, you won’t know exactly what you’re being offered, and you may be unpleasantly surprised at your event after it’s too late to make an adjustment.
There’s generally some truth behind the service being Unlimited, but there are also things you may think an Unlimited photo booth rental should include that often aren’t.
The Truth Contemporary digital photo booth rentals differ from booths of the past in that guests don’t pay for each strip. The host of the event pays one rental fee in advance that allows guests to use the booth repeatedly over a certain period of time.
That repeated use is often the truth behind the term Unlimited. Your guests are encouraged to use the booth frequently throughout the rental, and won’t be turned away because they’ve used it already.
The Lie: When contemporary digital photo booths first became available they were patterned after old style booths and only offered one or two strips per session.
However, with new curtain style and open air photo booths you can fit 10 or more people in a photo. One of the most requested features is instant photo reprints for each guest in the photo. Some companies include this in their Unlimited offering, while others don’t.
The real reason that Unlimited Use is deceptive is because your rental is always limited by the speed of the equipment. For any booth there is a limit to how many photos the camera, printer and photo booth computer can take and process in an hour.
High end equipment generally offers faster speed and better quality, but it can cost up to 10 times the price of low end models. This equipment cost will generally be passed on in the price you’ll pay. But, with fast equipment, your guests won’t wait in line nearly as long and will get multiple opportunities to use the photo booth.
Consider this Example
7 Guests are waiting to use the photo Booth,...
- Company 1 offers a reprint for each guest, has a 2 minute booth process, and the printer can create two prints every 15 seconds.
- In 3 minutes, seven people have used the booth, each person has a print to keep, plus one can go in your scrapbook if you have one.
- Company 2 offers double prints, has a 3 minute booth process, and the printer can create two prints every 60 seconds.
- In 4 minutes, seven people have used the booth but only 2 people get to keep prints. If you have a scrapbook one of the prints will go into the book, so only one guest will have a photo to keep.
In the above example, if you have a guestbook and hire Company 1 all seven guests will have a print to take home within 5 minutes. If you hire Company 2, it will take 32 minutes for all seven guests to have a print to keep.
Even if Company 2 offered a print for each guest, the slower speed of their printer means it would take 7 minutes before the printer was ready to accept photos from the next session. This means much more waiting in line than with Company 1.
Now you can see how a 6 hour ‘Unlimited’ photo booth might be a lesser value than a 2 hour booth from another company. Make sure you find out where the real limits are and how they will affect your event.
Tip: If you have an event with a short time frame, you might decide to go with printing a single 4x6” photo rather than photo strips because it takes less time to shoot and print a single image than a strip of four. Although it might cost a bit more, your guests will view the full sized photo as a treasured keepsake.