PTO Today

Hello,

We hold an annual Fall Dance where one event offered a "Photo Booth". The current setup uses a Polaroid camera, but that film is getting too expensive (and hard to find).

We'd like to go digital for next year. Does anyone have experience with photo printers that would work for this application? Cost per photo?

I'd love to hear what others have done.

Thanks.

We have done digital photos at carnival and other events, the only problem we ran into was when the printer stopped working. My biggest bit of advice is to plan on having at least a couple of cameras and printers set up, that way too you can alternate which one you're using to keep things moving.

Do you have to have it set-up so they get their pictures that night--- we've done picture areas for the last 3 years at several events where the kids/parents fill out a form -- take a picture at our photo area and then we deliver the pictures to their class by Monday/Tues.- if it's a Friday event- which most are-- the kids love it and have no problem waiting a few days for their photo-- we take all the pictures digitally-- charge $2.00 per pic-- go to CVS-- add a border/enhance the picture, if needed and print it-- you could also add wording if wanted--- we print off around 100 pictures per event-- it takes about an 1hour to add the border for each picture-- but it works great, plus we have digital photos for our archives or promotion. We found that ink and photo paper for printers on site just to expensive. Good luck! Fox mom

We usually order seasonal Fun Foam picture frames from Oriental Trade, and are lucky enough to get paper and ink donated. It's always funny how we stress about getting volunteers to run events at our school, but if we send out a list of specific items we need donated for events parents are very willing to bring the items in. When we did this at the school carnival we charged 4 tickets instead of the usual 1 or 2 for the other activities, I'm not sure how many pictures we ended up taking, but it didn't seem to be a problem. I guess it depends on how big of a crowd you're expecting.

How do you keep up with the pictures if you print them later? What about families that don't go to that school? How do you remember who they are and what they look like to send them their picture later on?

WE have the kids/parents fill out a form that has child's name/teacher/#of pics wanted/___X #of pics= total cost... and than a paid area that can be initialed when they pay-- if they say, we don't have a child at this school-- we tell them they can pic up there photos in the office-- normally pic. are taken on a Friday night/day event- we say that the pictures will be delivered on Monday to each classroom or office-- they say great and that's it--- we print over the week-end, put in envelopes and send to each teacher on Monday to hand out-- we use 1/2 the 1/2 sheet for our receipt and the other goes on the outside of the envelope that shows the child's name and teacher.... this has worked out great and we always put a great border around the photo, enhance it or lighten it up so it looks great-- for some events, we even add wording that shows the event and date, this is all free through CVS, Sam's, Costco... they love it... We also pre take a picture and put a border around it so they can see what the border will be and we know what's available ahead of time....