Electronics design / Software design / Industrial design

The idea of designing a retro photo booth came to me in 2017 when I read an article about the last surviving analog photo booth in Australia, and how it will soon go out of service. Modern DSLR-based photo booths feature HD colour images, landscape format, and tacky text overlay, and lack the soul and intimacy of the original chemical-based analog format.

This project quickly spiralled out of control and became a 6 year part-time passion project, eventually winding up as a physical, transportable booth which emulates the variation, imperfections, portrait aspect ratio and dimensions of a classic booth.

There are a few points of difference in my updated design. Because the booth has a digital screen instead of a mirror, it needed a nice UX interface. I went with an arcade-style aesthetic, with an 8-bit soundtrack and arcade style led push buttons. I used a dye-sublimation printer to print and cut glossy, professional, and long-lasting photos that are similar to the original strip shape and dimensions. The original booths could take over 15 minutes to chemically develop and dry the photos, whereas the dye-sub printer takes 30 seconds from a cold start, or 10 seconds warmed up.

The photo booth is powered by Arduino, Max, and OpenGL.

Launching publicly in 2023 (Australia).