Reivew of the ZLPOWER Mirror Photo Booth Camera Photobooth.
I’d been in the market for upgrading the photobooth services here and reduce the amount of setup and manpower at the events. Previously, we had two people manning the photobooth at our events. One person to handle the printing of the photos on a separate table and one person to actually take the photos and prompt people. I needed a more elegant solution.
I looked at ipad photos, but didn’t like the quality of the photos; so I knew going with a dslr photo booth was the only way to go.
Ordered the booth and setup was a breeze. This thing shipped fast! All it really took was a few setup screws and setting up windows photo booth software. I went with dslrbooth since we’ve used it before. You will need a dslr that’s small enough that will fit into the loading tray for the booth.
Included in this hardware setup is an i5 windows board with a touchscreen which doubles as the interface for the partygoers. It comes with built-in speakers. Also included is a rim light that connects to your dslr with a 18mm lens. There’s also an attraction light that illuminates a replaceable plexiglass that can be modified. They even give you an option to print a customized layout for your event.
Here are a few things that I like about this system. It’s definitely more portable than having the printer separated from the booth itself. It’s wired, so you don’t have to worry about network outages. #2. The booth is very definitely self-sustaining without actually having to man it 100% of the time. Initially, people may be confused about the interface or what to do, but after a while everyone gets the hang of it. #3. It’s heavy enough that you don’t have to worry about someone knocking it over. Previously, you’d have to rope off the printer and the tripod and pray that someone doesn’t accidentally trip over it.
#4 It’s bright and clean-looking. It just looks so professional standing on it’s own and if you have a good looking attraction video – it’ll sell itself. After this current event, I had half a dozen people asking me where I could rent this or get this booth.
There’s a few nitpicky things that I thought I’d mention. The shoe that’s included in this setup is a metal bracket that, when mounted, makes the camera stick out from the brace and makes closing the backdoor impossible. Luckily for me, I have a machine shop next door and just cut off the wings of that bracket to make it fit. There is also a nice-looking travelbox that the unit comes shipped in. Unfortunately, the warning labels in the instructions say it’s composed of some highly toxic materials so I just threw that away. You’re not going to want to take this apart for storage anyway. The ring light that comes included with the unit also is NOT usable for photographs because the reflection of the light bounces light back into the lens of the camera. So you get a halo effect, unless you turn it off with a switch. Additionally, the support light that illuminates the 1×3’ plexiglass sign will give off some illumination which may affect lighting conditions unless it’s far enough away. Depending on your situation the speakers may not be enough to counter the ambient noise of your event. A soundbar might fix this.
Other than that, it’s fantastic! What you’re buying is a windows machine with a touchscreen that is flexible enough to do other things if you wanted. The housing is better than I could have DIY myself. It’s metal and very good build-quality. I even toyed with the idea of putting a retrogaming emulator on there to put old arcade games in it.
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