Photo booth
A photo booth , partly photo booth called, is a about 2 m × 2 m × 1 m wide space construction, an automatic, on coin based camera includes well as a photo rapid processing machine or an image printer. It is used to take passport photos or spontaneous souvenir photos . They are often found in central locations, in train stations, ports, airfields, amusement parks, amusement centers and shopping centers. In the meantime, digital cameras are already used in most photo booths and the image is developed using a computer-controlled printer.
Appearance and functionality
Photo booths usually contain a height-adjustable seat or bench. After the coin has been inserted, the camera behind a pane usually takes two or four pictures with an interval of a few seconds (some machines produce up to eight pictures). The customer can often choose between four identical passport photos or a larger individual portrait. Before each exposure, an audible and visual warning signal may sound , which announces the next exposure, in order to enable the patient to pose in good time. After the last shot of the machine with the starting image development or print , which can take several minutes. The developed images, which may still require some drying time, are then output through a slot.
The latest devices are equipped with automatic image recognition and a voice computer. This means that images can be produced that meet the requirements for the electronic passport and identity card .
variants
The older photo booths work on a chemical basis. A photo paper is exposed and then developed in various chemicals. These are increasingly appearing in trendy districts or near discos, as the authentic retro photos are extremely popular. However, this no longer has much to do with the original purpose of taking pictures for identification documents and is therefore referred to as "fun photography". Newer machines, which can still be found in train stations, are completely digital.
Some machines allow the prior selection of stickers or postcards with various backgrounds as the output medium. Vending machines with photo stickers first appeared in Japan with the so-called purikura , which differ from photo vending machines outside of Japan by numerous other advanced functions.
In wedding and event photography, the use of a photo booth (often under the English name Photo Booth or photo box ) is offered by a large number of photographers or individual companies. For this purpose, cameras are used that are controlled by the event guests themselves using a radio remote control or a touchscreen.
history
The first patent for a photo booth was applied for on January 9, 1888 by Messrs Pope and Poole of Baltimore. A year later, on January 22, 1889, the US patent was granted. On October 16, 1888, an inventor named Sacco received French patent No. 193734 for such a machine. Finally, on February 20, 1889, Christel Föge, Joseph Raders and Carl Griese from Hamburg received the imperial patent 51081 for their "apparatus for the automatic production of photographs".
Since no documents have yet been found that prove that these early inventions were brought to market readiness, one must assume that the automat of the inventor Ernest Enjalbert (French patent no. 196451 of March 4, 1889) was the first functional and public one set up photo booth was. It was presented on May 6, 1889 at the Paris World's Fair.
As a result, numerous patents were registered. The first economically successful machine was the Bosco photo machine from the inventor Conrad Bernitt from Hamburg (Reich patent 58613 from July 16, 1890).
During this time all machines produced ferrotypes (photos on black plate). The German Carl Sasse had a machine for the negative-positive process patented for the first time in England in 1896. In 1900 the Germans Schultze and Vollmann improved this process. The chemical factory on shares (formerly E. Schering) then introduced the principle of the image strip into machine photography with a patent dated July 12, 1900 .
A Jew, Anatol Marko Josephewitz, who was born in Siberia in 1894 and has called himself Anatol Josepho since 1921 , immigrated to the USA in 1923. He developed the idea of a photo booth, applied for a patent for it in 1925, built it with borrowed money and set up a first prototype on Broadway. He called his machine and company Photomaton . The company was so successful that Josepho was able to sell the US rights to it in March 1927 (before the patent was granted) for a million dollars to a consortium of business people.
Josepho had designed a cabin that, apart from the front, was closed on all sides (including a lid). Many of the first Photomaton booths were set up in department stores. The department store operators put curtains on the front of the booths so that the vending machine's flashlight didn't disrupt sales too much. This "seclusion" during the recording brought Photomaton success. Such curtains later became part of all photo booths.
literature
- Gunter Karl Bose : Photomaton . 500 machine pictures: women, men, children 1928-1945 , Institute for Book Art, Leipzig 2011 ISBN 978-3-932865-63-3
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Oskar Grün, Jean-Claude Brunner: The customer as a service provider: From self-service to co-production . 1st edition. Springer-Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-409-12003-3 , p. 132 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed January 14, 2017]).
- ↑ Photos - "beautiful and useful at the same time": the object of photography . In: Irene Ziehe, Ulrich Hägele (Hrsg.): Visual culture, studies and materials . tape 2 . LIT Verlag Münster, 2006, ISBN 3-8258-8663-8 , p. 254 ff. and 264 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed on January 14, 2017]).
- ^ Carl Griese: Memories . BoD Norderstedt 2013, ISBN 978-3-7322-8310-1 , pp. 113-116
- ^ Franz Häussler: Photography in Augsburg, 1839 to 1900: with a part of the picture from the photo treasures of the Augsburg city archive . In: Contributions to the history of the city of Augsburg . tape 1 . Wißner-Verlag, Augsburg 2004, ISBN 3-89639-432-0 , p. 66 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed January 14, 2017]).
- ↑ Ernst Massen: Brief history of the photo booth . In: Photo Antiquaria No. 103 (4/2011)