The biggest limitation is that you can’t use electronic flash with any of them, so you need to have a bright continuous light source.Ĭanon Powershot point and shoot digital cameras – but not the current models. All you need is one USB cable from camera to computer, you don’t need a flash cable and you don’t need a power supply cable. The easiest to connect, the cheapest to buy.
So if you want to build or modify a photo booth you’re pretty much limited to 4 families of cameras: The manufacturers have never released a Software Developers Kit (SDK), which would allow the designers of photo booth software to bring those cameras into the fold. Forget it – they don’t have tethered mode capability built in. Mirrorless cameras such as the Canon EOS-M or the Sony NEX series spring to mind. There are lots of great cameras that would be perfect photo booth cameras if only they offered a tethered mode – but for some reason the camera manufacturers don’t do this. Wireless communication modes just don’t work fast enough and aren’t reliable enough in the rough-and-tumble real world of commercial work. That means your camera has to be capable of working in a tethered mode, where information gets passed back and forth by means of a USB cable.
No matter what software you choose, you’ve got to be able to control your camera and get the photos it takes into a computer.
