Monitoring Desk
NEW YORK: For those who regularly throw big events or parties, photobooths are a popular amenity, but rental costs can be sky high.
Now for just $450 you can buy HP’s new all-in-one Sprocket Photobooth, which can snap group shots, add effects, filters and themed borders and then instantly spit out a copy of the photo for guests to take with them.
If you’re okay with a lot of DIY there are plenty of tutorials online that will walk you through the process of cobbling together a laptop, camera, software and even lights to create a makeshift photobooth.
The one catch is that it might not be completely idiot-proof, and the last thing you want is to have to spend all your time at a party serving as tech support.
The HP Sprocket Photobooth (which is actually from C+A Global, a company that licenses brands like HP and Kodak) packs all the necessary photobooth tech, including a user-friendly interface, into a compact kiosk that can be placed on a table so that its camera is positioned at a proper height to take photos of people.
A 10-inch touchscreen provides a live preview of the camera’s framing, a countdown to when the image is being snapped, and a menu of customizable themed photo frames that can be applied to the image alongside filters like brightness, contrast or a nostalgic monochromatic effect.
To ensure everyone looks their best, the touchscreen is also surrounded by a ring of LED lights that illuminate when a photo is being taken.
Built into the bottom of the photobooth is an instant printer which uses the same print technology as HP’s portable Sprocket printers instead of Polaroid or Fujifilm Instax film stock.
The special Zink paper it relies on features layers of cyan, magenta and yellow dyes that form microscopic crystals of specific colors depending on how long heat is applied from a print head. It’s essentially a thermal printer, but slower and more expensive.
The Zink printing process takes about a minute for the 3.5 x 4.25-inch photos the booth uses, but a user’s patience is rewarded with prints that arrive fully developed and dry enough to be immediately handled.
So in addition to the HP Sprocket Photobooth’s $450 price tag you’ll also want to factor in the cost of the Zink paper.
A 50-pack is currently listed on Amazon for $40, or $0.80 for every Zink photo that’s printed.
That will add up quickly. Unfortunately the one feature that HP didn’t include on this photobooth was a credit card slot, so owners could break even or maybe even make a profit.
