Photo booth tweaks

I haven't written anything in a long time. Because of changes starting last year I have been away from my tools almost every weekend. Hopefully next year I get the chance to do what I like doing best. Making stuff.

One of the most fun projects was building the photo booth for the Christmas party for work over two years ago. For the party last year I decided to tweak it a little bit by adding a button to turn off/on the flash. But during the party I had to turn the flash on several times because people pressed the button and turned the flash off and other people weren't aware you could turn it back on. 

So I added a quick disconnect to the button inside the photo booth so you can choose if you want a working flash control button or not. If it is disconnected the flash will always trigger. If it is connected then it depends on the state of the flash control button. 

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Another tweak was required for my flash diffusser. The flash is really bright so originally I cut a diffusser out of some A4 paper. For normal lightning conditions this works fine and you get the cool effect of a camera flash without ending up squinting in the photos. But the Christmas parties tended to be at a location with very little lighting during the party. So even with the automatic ISO detection a lot of photos looked underexposed. After some hunting around in my flat I found some thin mat plastic that would do the trick. It lets through a lot more light while still diffusing a little.

General build instructions

For the finished photo booth and some build instructions visit my photo booth project page.