Wedding Disposable Cameras: How do they compare?

“We’re getting wedding disposable cameras!”. We hear this from time to time and spoiler alert – we’re a photo booth company! Likewise, we know a thing or two about wedding photography and disposable cameras.

Disposable cameras were all the rage before photo booths became accessible for special events. Don’t get us wrong – wedding disposable cameras can be fun. However, there’s some problems that coincide with film photography that can cause a few unexpected issues. We’re breaking them down today on the blog.

Wedding disposable cameras don’t print

It may seem like a small thing but it’s actually the biggest thing! Guests can snap away but they don’t receive awesome instant prints to take home with them. If you haven’t seen a photo booth in action, we seriously recommend you do. You’ll be blown away but how excited guests get when they receive their instant prints.

In addition, there’s our included guest book. Guests and our clients alike absolutely love this feature of our all-inclusive package. Your guests will have a ball creating your book of memories throughout the evening. Imagine waking up the day after and thumbing through your beautiful album over brunch. With wedding disposable cameras there will be no instant memories the following day.

Image quality is everything

No one will deny image quality has come ahead leaps and bounds with digital. That’s why our booths are designed around the best digital photography has to offer with the sweet vintage touch of instant prints. Wedding disposable cameras are limited to film only. This means no sharing of digital copies afterwards. After all, whether we like it or not, we live in a digital world. Guests naturally want to text, email and social share their photos. This is super problematic with film cameras.

In the nicest possible way, most of us aren’t film photographers! Capturing usable photos on film is not something most of us know how to do. Wedding cameras do offer automatic settings but this also often involves pop up flash due to the night time environment. Remember getting a roll of film back and everyone had red eyes from the flash…? Yep! “Zombie guests” are the last thing you want for your wedding day memories.

Disposable cameras are expensive

Let’s do some basic maths on an average event of 100 people.
That’s around 12 tables of people and you need (at least) one camera per table. That will be around $250.
Then there’s purchasing the film which works out to around $10 per roll for 24 exposures. So now you’re up to $370, and that’s only one roll of film per table. Imagine how many shots your slightly inebriated friends are going to want to shoot off in a night!
Now you need to get those photos developed. Big W offers this service for around $10 per roll. So let’s add on another $120 to bring it to a $490 running total.

Now let’s account for at least 3 rolls of film per table over the course of the night so that’s another $240. Wow – you’re now up to $730!

The biggest cost of all

There is nothing like the disappointment and risk of developing film from “amateur photographers” when photos turn out poorly. Washed out flash, blurry images, red eyes, photos turning out black and shots of toilets (!) are all stories we’ve heard over the years.

Our all-inclusive package removes the worry and provides the best possible solution in the event environment. You won’t have to worry about a thing while the booth does what it does and guests get that awesome wedding disposable camera experience with Guest Cam – minus all the problems we’ve detailed above.