Saturday, January 7, 2012

DIY: Photo Booth - Bad Holiday Sweater Party

Part VII: Bad Holiday Sweater Party

In order to ensure that the Photo Booth was operational for the New Year's Eve wedding, I arranged to test it out at a Bad Holiday Sweater party. This not only was valuable in creating a run through on transporting the booth, but setting up and configuring the lighting and photo booth software.

The party had a number of kids who were able to figure out the booth in only a few seconds, which was great news for the arcade buttons ease of use. It only took about 20 minutes from the car to get it fully set up inside. It was not only fun, but this preparation ensured that the wedding would go smoothly. The Breeze Systems software worked great, as I was able to create custom screens specifically for the Holiday get together.

This is the Screen that is enabled when "Live View" is off. I programmed the black arcade button to switch to this mode when the booth was not being used.

This is the background screen while the booth is idle, but in Live View mode. The 5D Mark II Canon camera displays the users in the booth in mirror mode, so it looks like a mirror.

There are a number of screens that are displayed in sequence before each picture is captured. I had the booth configured to take 4 images, so I made 4 different backgrounds.

Since it's natural for users to watch themselves on the screen, I created a background to display 1 second before the images is captured to remind them to look up at camera.

After the 4 images are captured, this is the processing screen that displays to the users. The Breeze system software can be customized with optional screens, and allows the booth to be tailored specifically for the event.

Here are a few results.

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Tuesday, January 3, 2012

DIY: Photobooth - Wedding Results & Lessons Learned



The New Year's Eve Sugar Wedding at the Edgewater Hotel in Madison, Wisconsin was epic. The DIY Photo Booth was built specifically for this event, and it turned out fantastic. The booth was busy non-stop for almost 6 hours, and was described as the hit of the wedding.

Rules of the booth!

Aside from a few minor glitches in the beginning, the booth ran fairly smoothly for the duration. A few printing issues, and initial remote flash issues were cleared up, and people were enjoying the open-air booth the entire night.

Here is the booth and printer table at the reception. You can see here the mounted softboxes, as well as the GoPro HD Hero 2 on a flexible mount. The built-in softbox provided illumination to help with live view preview. You can also see the projector on the top of the booth pointed perpendicular to the user area showing the slideshow up on the screen. Images were added to the slideshow as they were captured using the Breeze viewer software. The screen on the back of the booth and the projector were mirrored to show the same slide show on both screens.

Here are some final images with the overlay:

Backdrop Casualty: Too much to drink? Why not attempt some crazy poses and fall into the backdrop! It was funny at the time.

The Bride and Groom: Hugh and Annie!

We learned that you need to ensure that you have someone monitoring the booth so people stand in the right spot. My wife was also kind enough to help people with the printed images and the guestbook. Apparently, 2-sided tape is pretty complicated, and some people just wanted you to do it for them. Also, people cannot seem to keep their hands off the printers, and couldn't understand that the paper goes through a few times until it's done. Having a guestbook table monitor was key.

I also learned that having enough time before the event to test lighting is essential. The mood in the room was different from when we set up the previous day, so we had a bit of a delay getting this configured at the start of the event. Considering that we used remote flashes with softboxes, it worked out great. Just ensure that the flashes, pocket wizards, and camera all had fresh batteries. I had to change the battery on the camera 2 times before the end of the 6 hours. Live view definitely takes a toll on the charge.

If I were to have a go at this business for other events, and not just a friends wedding, I'd want to ensure that I upgraded to a faster printer. Towards the end of the night, we were almost an hour behind in printing, as we were printing 2 copies of each overlay; one for the guestbook, and one for the users. We switched this to one copy after a majority of people had gone through the booth , to try and catch up.

The project was a neat addition last minute. Projecting the images up on the screen above the photo booth generated and kept interest in the booth all night long. Highly recommend using that again. The cloned second monitor had issues with VGA, and had a green tint. I think I'll use the booth with the digital DVI cables in the future to prevent this.

The guestbook was also popular with the guests, and using the images from the photobooth gave them a unique and creative momento that was signed by everyone at the party.

Overall, I'm very please at the results, and the Bride and groom are happy. Everyone complimented us on a neat idea, as many people have not seen this before. The question is, do I continue to offer this as a service???

I also attached a GoPro camera to the booth to capture a time lapse of the users. It was a bit dark, but still fun to see how the night progressed:


Special thanks must be given to the following people, who ensured the success of the photo booth:

Katie Mikkelson for manning the guestbook station, and making sure guests didn't touch the printers or run off with the prints.

Jaron Berman for helping set up and configure the lighting.

Matt Schroeder for grabbing my camera while I was operating the booth, and taking images at the reception.

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Thursday, December 8, 2011

DIY: Wireless Internet Enabled Photo Booth

Part V: Upload Images Captured By Photo Booth to the Internet!

I volunteered to come up with a photo booth solution for a friends wedding coming up at the end of 2011. They couldn't decide if they wanted to provide prints for the guests, or have everything available online after the fact. I decided that it would be a good idea to have the option of both. Hooking up a photo printer will not be a problem if they decide to go that route. As an alternative, I came up with the idea of uploading the files as they were taken to one of my online galleries. During my research, I did find a number of options for batch uploading of files, but I really needed a solution that would detect new files as they came into a folder, and them upload them to Flickr or SmugMug.

I stumbled across a number of possible solutions, but ended up going with a python script that runs on a Windows machine from the command line that will monitor the contents of a specified folder, and upload any images as they are saved to my Flickr account. The script is configurable, and can be set to run continuously. For the Photo Booth project, this is pretty slick, as it will provide an online backup of the images shortly after they are taken.

Requirement: Internet Access (Wired & Wireless Options included.)
The stand which holds my Photo Booth PC has been modified to include a RJ-45 port that can be hooked up to any standard internet connection through a patch cable, as well as a wireless network adapter to connect to any open nearby WiFi connection. I installed a Leviton quickport wall jack, used a RJ-45 quickport module, and manually modified a "Blank" insert to house the wireless antenna port. To do this, I drilled a hole into one or the blank inserts big enough to screw the female end of the RP-SMA to SMA cable. The cable was attached to the PCI card on the computer inside the cabinet. I'm not sure this was necessary, but wanted ensure a good signal to the PC. Modifying a blank insert was a simple solution to the fact that I don't think that these type of quickport modules exist, or at least not from Leviton.


The wall plate also has a USB port module as well as a HDMI port. These were added to ensure connectivity with an external Photo printer through USB, and the ability to connect a projector or HD TV to the booth to display a slide show via HDMI. The wall plate has 6 openings, and I've used 4 of them, leaving room for expansion if necessary. Here are the parts I used:



Automated Image Upload to Flickr: Python & upload.py
There are many options for uploading files to the internet, but needed something that would be automated. I personally use SmugMug and Flickr to host my online images. I started with trying to find a solution for SmugMug, but found that all of the available options were dated, and potentially broken by changes to the SmugMug API. I settled on using Flickr, and a command line uploader that leverages the Python programming language. I found uploadr.py from http://beserk.org/, a script offered by Cameron Mallory, which tested and worked perfectly for my requirements. You can edit the script to specify the image location, and set image attributes like tags and who can see them in your gallery. I set my script to private, kept the default tag of "auto-upload" and tested the script.

You can see by this screenshot that the command line needed to authenticate to Flickr, which brought up my default browser and asked for permission to allow this type of integration. After selecting "Y", it uploaded 3 existing images in the folder. It waited for 2 more cycles of checking at 60 second intervals, and then uploaded 3 more images that were added to the folder.


Basically, as people filter through the Photo Booth, all images captured will be uploaded to Flickr automagically within a few minutes depending on the upload speed of the internet connection. This not only provides an instant backup, but additional opportunities to display the images away from the photo booth. I think that the automated upload gives this DIY "booth" some flair, and isn't something I've seen before. Can't wait to test it out!

Update: The wedding venue did not have free WiFi, and I was not able to add this into the actual event. However, I think with a fast enough broadband connection with a decent upload speed, this would be a viable method for image backup.


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Sunday, November 27, 2011

DIY: Photo Booth - Props



The wedding that the Photo Booth was built for, happened to land on New Year's Eve. This virtually guaranteed that there would be hats, noise makers, and tiaras. I wanted to have some other props that could be brought out later in the event, and started looking around the house for options. I also went online to find some ideas, and discovered that there are many free resources for photo booth props. Popular opinion states that "Mustache on a Stick" is SOOOO 5 years ago, but I loved the idea. Due to the nature of this event, I didn't want to spend tons of money on props, so making them is the next best, and cheapest alternative.


Inventory at latest Event:
  • Mustaches on a stick
  • Felt "Stick-on" Mustaches
  • Goofy glasses
  • Cheese Head
  • Batman Mask On a Stick
  • Pirate Bandana and Eye Patch On a Stick
  • Cowboy Hat On a Stick
  • Hawaiian Lei
  • New Year's Eve Party Hats and Glasses
  • Bunny Ears on a Stick
You can make your own Photo Booth Props using a number of available Online resources. Here are a few links to get you started.

Jordan's Oh Happy Day - Photo Booth Props
Photobooth Props Set #3


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DIY: Photo Booth - dSLR Remote Pro

Part III: Photo booth software - dSLR Remote Pro

A friend requested that I come up with a solution for providing a photo booth for their upcoming wedding. I had created an Automate script for an old MacBook and Canon G9 as a cheap photobooth alternative a few years ago. However, I wanted to develop something a little more professional, and keep the cost cheaper than going out an renting a booth. My DIY Photo Booth project was born, and has been consuming my time for the past couple of months. One of the biggest challenges is deciding on which software to use for your booth, as there are many options available. I discovered dSLR Remote Pro by Breeze Systems, which is more than just a fully functional photo booth system, but also contains other features that can be used with my Canon dSLR cameras.

What I really liked about the photo booth features within dSLR Remote Pro was the ability to customize the interface to exactly what I needed. You can run the your system as a Photo Booth, or a Video Booth. You can customize and print photos, or just save them locally for use later. Since the DIY Booth was going to be used for a wedding, I wanted to be able to tailor the background images and user instructions for the event. I also wanted the interface to be user friendly and self-maintained. I installed arcade buttons to the enclosure that activated either photo mode, video mode, or start capture.

The computer that I used for this was an old HP dx2000 mini tower, running a Pentium 4, 2.80 Ghz processor with 2 GB of RAM. I was worried that this would be under-powered, as it was destined to be junked, and I saved it to recycle it in the booth. The phot obooth software by itself doesn't take that many resources, but you add a slideshow running at the same time, plus a full print queue, this old PC worked hard. I definitely think that a modern multiprocessor PC with more memory would be wise, but I was able to get through both events without any computer freezes.

Here are examples of the Backgrounds I used for the wedding:
This is the background that is displayed when live view is not active. The black button simulates a CTRL-S to switch to Live View Mode.

This background shows the booth users a mirrored image of themselves in the box. Pressing the green button simulates a left-click.

Since the users tend to look at themselves in the LCD screen, I created this image to remind them to look at the camera. It is displayed 1 second before the camera clicks the shutter.


When the 4 images are captured, a processing screen is displayed before going back to the beginning of the sequence.









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DIY: Photo Booth - Teensy


The Teensy USB Development Board was used in my DIY Photo Booth Project to add arcade style buttons to the enclosure to enable the user to switch between Photo and Video Modes, Start the image/video capture, and enable/disable the camera's live view. I originally had one button to activate Photo Mode, and a different button to activate Video mode. However, I found that dSLR Remote Pro had a simpler keyboard shortcut that could alternate between both photo and video modes. Here is my original sketch planning on how I would use Teensy.


The big Green button is LED backlit, and will be used to initiate either the Photo or Video countdown. Wiring was simple and straight forward. Power to the Teensy is provided by the USB Cable going to the PC. I found other teensy projects that were similar and used online documentation to figure out how to wire up the board properly. Some people used resistors and power from the teensy, but I kept it as simple as possible.



You can used compiled C programming code, or Arduino to configure the Teensy. I used Arduino, and here is my script that was uploaded to the Teensy. The final version had the big green button simulating a left click of the mouse, the black button to toggle live view (F6 button), and the yellow button to toggle back and forth between Photo and Video modes. (CTRL-S)


/*
Photobooth LED Buttons
*/
// Setting variables that correspond to the PIN numbers that
const int boothStart = 8; // Green Start Button - 8
const int liveViewMode = 4; // Live View Mode Toggle - 6
const int videoPhotoMode = 6; // Photo / Video Mode Toggle Button - 4
int startButtonStatus = 0;
int liveViewButtonStatus = 0;
int cameraButtonStatus = 0;
void setup() {
pinMode(boothStart, INPUT);
pinMode(liveViewMode, INPUT);
pinMode(videoPhotoMode, INPUT);
}
void loop(){

// Check Button Status
startButtonStatus = digitalRead(boothStart);
liveViewButtonStatus = digitalRead(liveViewMode);
cameraButtonStatus = digitalRead(videoPhotoMode);

// If boothStart button is pressed
if (startButtonStatus == HIGH) {
Mouse.set_buttons(1, 0, 0); // click left button
// delay(100);
Mouse.set_buttons(0, 0, 0); // release buttons
delay(500);
}
// If liveViewButton button is pressed
if (liveViewButtonStatus == HIGH) {
Keyboard.set_key1(KEY_F6);
Keyboard.send_now();
Keyboard.set_modifier(0);
Keyboard.set_key1(0);
Keyboard.send_now();
delay(500);
}

// If cameraMode button is pressed
if (cameraButtonStatus == HIGH) {
Keyboard.set_modifier(MODIFIERKEY_CTRL);
Keyboard.set_key1(KEY_S);
Keyboard.send_now();
Keyboard.set_modifier(0);
Keyboard.set_key1(0);
Keyboard.send_now();
delay(500);
}
}


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DIY: Open Air "Photo Booth" - Overview

DIY Open Air Wireless Internet-enabled "Photo Booth" with Slide Show

Each section of this project is separated into different blog posts. To skip the overview, use the links below to dive deeper into this project. This blog will be updated as the booth is completed and time is allocated for updating the project blog.

Part I: The Idea and Overview
I had been thinking of building a Photo Booth for a couple of years, but never seemed to get around to it. A good friend is getting married at the end of the year, and I'm am the Official Photographer for the event. In speaking with him about the wedding, he had assigned another friend of ours to create a photo booth. I had mentioned that I could help on that project as I had already done heaps of research on the subject. In chatting with our mutual friend, he was having issues coming up with reasonable solutions, and I brought up additional concerns and options.
  • Did the Bride and Groom want an actual booth, as this might limit the number of people who could participate?
  • Would an "Open Air Booth" be acceptable, this allowing groups of people to participate?
  • Would they want the booth to product prints for the guests, and potentially themselves?
It was decided that a laptop running photo booth software and capturing images from a webcam would just not be good enough for this event. I said that I would take the lead on this and come up with a plan. Here are my personal requirements:
  • Must be able to utilize dSRL Canon camera to capture great shots within the booth
  • A Booth that is portable, and can be modified to use as a booth and open with a backdrop.
  • Built-in Softbox for proper lighting
  • Must be self-sufficient and users can figure it out themselves. Not sure if we'll have an attendant at this event. (Remember, I'm the Official Photog, and can't consume my time with the booth)
  • Booth PC would be internet enabled and wireless
  • Images would be automagically uploaded to the internet as backup as they were taken.
  • Can be used as either a Photobooth or a Video Booth.



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