Frequently Asked Questions

Cameras

SLR Booth has been designed to work with the most powerful and popular Canon and Nikon SLR cameras on the market today.  Our supported cameras list is where we add cameras that we have tested with the app here at SLR Booth HQ.  If your camera that you are interested in is not on the list, the best thing to do is download the app and try it out! If it does work, we’d love for you to let us know (info@slrbooth.com) so that we can add it to our test list and share it with the SLR Community.

I have all of the supported hardware, but my app can’t seem to control the camera. What’s up?

Make sure you grant permission for the app to use the camera when you plug it in, and don’t let the gallery or any other app have control of it.

Can I use the app without a camera?

SLR Booth was designed to control your powerful, high-end DSLR camera to vastly improve the quality of the photographs taken during an event. If you don’t have a stand-alone camera and want to use the camera in your device, there are many photobooth style apps that you can use, likely already installed on your device from the factory. These are lots of fun, but we love the control and photo quality we get from using our DSLR cameras.

Will this work with a camera using a Eyefi card?

You can certainly use an Eyefi card in the camera while shooting, but the communication between your tablet and the camera has to happen over USB, not wifi.

Special Considerations for Canon Owners

If your Canon is 40D or higher (ie, is not part of the Rebel series), the  LiveView silent shooting setting needs to be disabled in order for the flash to fire through the app. On the Rebel, the non e-TTL flash won’t fire in live view, so you may need to investigate using e-TTL compatible triggers, or using an onboard flash as a wink light to trigger an optical slave off camera.

You need to have a USB OTG adapter to plug your camera into your tablet. On some Canon Rebels you need to enable live view in the menu system on your camera.

Tablets

I am concerned about the battery life of an android tablet while using the app for a few hours. Any suggestions?

If your device only has a single USB port, you might not be able to charge at the same time. There are custom USB-OTG adapters for some Samsung devices that allow this, but if  you are looking for something that can run for hours on end, something with a USB port and separate power port will be your best bet.   AOC, Acer and HP all make 21-24″ all in ones with multiple USB ports and dedicated power.  An USB OTG Y cable would allow you to charge and connect to your camera at the same time. Support for simultaneous USB and charging is heavily dependent on the device, so be sure to research which cable/hub might work for your specific tablet.

Why can’t I use the app with my Samsung Galaxy Tab 4?

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 7″ tablet does not have USB-OTG support, so sadly it can’t control an SLR camera via USB. Most new tablets have USB-OTG support these days, but this particular one is quite popular, and doesn’t have that feature.

Do you have any recommendations on a low cost large screen tablet?

Acer, AOC and HP all made 21-24″ android all in ones, but they are becoming more and more rare. Here at SLR Booth HQ, we have an AOC A2272PW4T running Android 4.2.2 that we are really happy with.

What is the lowest version of Android that the app works with?

Version 4.1

Printing

Do you know if the [insert printer name here] is supported?

If a printer supports AirPrint, it should be supported. You can usually check this in the online printer documentation, such as this one for the HP6100: http://support.hp.com/us-en/product/HP-Officejet-6100-ePrinter-series—H6/4322969/model/4323174/document/c03116917/. 

We will be supporting Google Cloud print very soon (early 2016).

Can an earlier Canon Selphy printer (without WiFi) work, with a USB OTG -splitter (one USB to support the camera, one to support the Selphy 800 or 900?

The Selphys all require custom drivers to print via USB. If you want to print to an older Selphy that doesn’t have AirPrint support, you’ll have to plug it into a computer and share it over the network.

My venue does not have wifi … can I still print from the app?

If you are using a Canon Selphy, it has a built-in access point, so you can connect your tablet to it directly (of course you can’t email or share files through that connection, just print). You could also use your mobile phone as a wifi hotspot to connect your tablet and printer together.

I want to use a high-quality dye-sub printer for my events to support on-demand printing. Can I print over wifi from the app?

Most professional dye-sub printers don’t support wireless printing via AirPrint, so they need to be connected to a laptop or wireless print server to share them, so the SLR Booth app can find them. We use a Mac laptop to share a HiTi P510L printer at our larger events, and it works great. You could also use a Linux computer running CUPS to share the printer, or a wireless print server like the Lantronix ones (although device support on these is a bit spotty). The app has some very basic USB printing support built in (you can try it out – we have it working with the injket and laser printers in our office), but most high-end dye-sub photo printers need custom driver support. We are definitely looking at this for a future release.

My Bluetooth printer is not showing up … what’s wrong?

SLR Booth does not support Bluetooth.  We support AirPrint, and will support Google Cloud Print very soon (early 2016).

Backgrounds and Templates

Can I add a logo to any template?

You can add a logo to the built-in photo strip template. Otherwise, you can add a totally custom template with whatever logo you like.

I see that there is an option to add more templates, are there instructions on how I can make my own?

Yes! You can add custom templates – you just need a .png file with the photo placeholders as transparent areas. Take a look at our “Custom Templates” page – we are constantly updating that with new information and how-tos.

Troubleshooting

I’ve set everything up and I think that all of my devices are supported, but I’m getting an error message telling me that a compatible device is not connected. What’s up?

Often, this error is due to the camera not being started before the app.  Try these steps:

1.  Unplug

2. Exit SLR Booth app

3. Restart your camera

4. Plug back in and try again.

To find out for sure if your device supports USB host mode, download the app “USB Host Diagnostics” from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.usbhostdiagnostics

When I took some test shots, I noticed that the files were saved on the Android, not the camera’s SD card. Am I doing something wrong? Is there a setting I missed?

You are using the free version of the app, which will only store downsized images with a watermark on your tablet. The full version will keep the full size originals on the camera.

I’m using a regular multi-photo template (not a filmstrip), but the photos are duplicated?

Check your camera settings – if you’re shooting RAW+JPEG, but don’t have the option to skip RAW file downloads, the app will get two photos downloaded for each photo you take.

I’m using a regular multi-photo template (not a filmstrip), but the photo placeholders are all white?

The graphics processors on some devices can’t handle large image sizes – try setting your camera to shoot a S or M sized jpeg file. Those are still large enough for populating templates, and as a bonus they transfer faster and take up less space on your device!

My photos aren’t showing up in the Gallery app

The default android gallery app periodically scans for new folders with images to display. So the first time you use SLR Booth (or switch to a new album), the gallery app may take time to notice it. You can force the gallery to update itself by doing the following:

Go to settings – apps – gallery
Clear cache, clear data, force close

Go to settings – apps – media storage
Clear cache, clear data, force close

Hard reset your device, and when you load the gallery app again, it will scan for new folders.

The app takes a few seconds to display photos after they’re taken

When a photo is taken, the camera first writes it to the local memory card and then SLR Booth downloads the photo from the camera over the USB cable and displays it. For large RAW images (which can be 10s of megabytes each), this can take a few seconds. To speed things up, consider shooting smaller sized images, or shooting JPEG images as these will transfer much quicker. You can also set your camera to shoot RAW+JPEG, but tell SLR Booth to only download JPEG images in the app settings.

The countdown doesn’t match up exactly with when the camera takes the picture

There is an option on the settings screen where you can configure the delay between when the shutter signal is sent, and when the camera takes the picture. This will be different for every combination of camera, focus mode (manual vs automatic), and ambient lighting. For example, a Canon 60D using “Quick” live view autofocus under indoor lighting takes about 1200ms (or 1.2 seconds).

The camera wasn’t able to take a picture, and now the screen is frozen

There are a variety of reasons the camera might fail to take a photo:

  • Unable to autofocus due to low light or subject being too close
  • Missing memory card
  • Low battery

When this happens, the app will wait for 30 seconds, and try again. If it was an autofocus issue, it may be successful. If it was a battery or memory card issue, it will stay in this loop until the issue is addressed.

The app won’t connect to the camera, I get a CP -1 12 error.

This generally means another app on your tablet is using the camera. Often this will happen when the gallery asks to use the camera when you first plug it in. Unplug the camera, turn it off and on again, and plug it back in. If the gallery asks to use the usb device, hit the cancel button. If the SLR Booth app asks for permission to use the usb device, grant it.

 

 

338 Comments

  1. Hello
    I just bought your app and installed it. I use a nikon a brand new D3300 with a tablet with Android 4.4.2
    the nikon is set up in full auto and connectd to the tablet of course. When I launch SLR, i received most of the time the following error code: “session already open(0x201e)”. I think this is due to the connection between the camera and the app…
    PLease let me know
    Regards

    • Hi Carlito – I find it works best if you don’t manually launch the app. Instead, plug the camera in, and when prompted, tell android to use SLR Booth.

  2. Hi Slr-boother;

    I’m trying to make my own template. I made a PNG-file for it in photoshop. I put it on my tablet.
    I opend the SLR-booth-app, did everything in your tutorial. Search for the map i put the file in. But SLR-booth didn’t reconized it.
    Did I do somthing wrong? Can you help me?

    Greeting Gust

  3. I can print from my Nexus 7 and my Nexus 5x to my HP ENVY 5660 over wifi, but I have to select paper size and orientation manually for every print.
    In the settings menu of SLR Booth, under the ‘Printer’ submenu, the HP ENVY 5660 doesn’t show up at all.
    Similarly, under ‘Paper Size’ submenu I don’t get an option to select paper size.
    I’m trying to set things up so that users don’t have to manually select paper size and orientation each time they want to print.
    Both Android devices are running android 6.0.

    • Are you printing via Google Cloud Print? Only AirPrint allows you to specify the printer and page size ahead of time. Cloud Print has to be specified for each print. (Lame, but a limitation of the GCP service)

      • Afaik it’s Air Print; I’ve never set up my printer with Google cloud print.
        The printer shows up via the HP Print Service plugin.

  4. hi, I have sub printer Mitsubishi cp-d70dw, nikon d3x and lenovo yoga 3 tab. Printer is conection to notebook (win10) with usb cable.
    the place where I work is not wifi. There is a solution for connecting offline tablet and laptop? thx

  5. Hi
    Ive recently bought the app, ive got nikon d5000 using a samsung tab s new version,
    There seems to be quite a big delay in taking photos and waiting for it in the gallery, especially when im using the 4 in 1 template, also say cannot find image in camera then its gona retake then repeating the process. Ive fixed it on settings in regards to the delay and ive got a pretty good sd card as well.

    Pls help..

    Thanks

    • Shooting large RAW files can slow it down substantially. If you shoot a S or M JPEG, things will be much quicker, and that’s plenty of resolution for printing a 4×6 – especially in a multi-shot template.

  6. Hi Greg,

    first of all a big compliment for you and your team. In my eyes, Slrbooth is the best Photobooth App for Android. With its huge functional range it even can compete against well-established Windows Photobooth Software, which is ten times more expensive. Thank you for your hard work and for the good support guys!

    I have two questions to ask:

    1. I am using an Android All In One PC (AOC A2472PW4T) for Slrbooth. This device has only 8 GB of built in memory and only 5 GB are usable for data (3 GB are used by Android OS and preistalled Apps). Because I can attatch external Storage via USB or SD-Cards it would be very welcome to me being abled to select the folder, where Slrbooth stores the photos.

    2. One problem with Android is that a user can leave the App by pressing the home button and there is no software side possibility to disable the home button. Therefore I am planning to cover the android navigation bar (wich contains the softbuttons for navigation) with a strip of wood when building a box for the Photobooth. The only problem is, that the user is not abled to leave the Galery anymore because there are no naviagtion buttons in the app to go back to the image capturing screen.

    Would it be possible to realize these two features in an upcoming version of Slrbooth?

    Many thanks and happy easter,
    Marco

    • Hi Marco – thanks for the kind words! I’ll look at adding the navigation, and would love to allow saving to an SD card – hopefully Google makes that possible again.

      • Hi Greg,

        afaik. the only restriction saving data to SD Card exists with Android 4.4 Kitkat (missing gid=”media_rw” in system file Platform.xml). Versions before and after Kitkat should make no trouble. However I would love to have this feature even if it only works with non-Kitkat Versions of Android. My device uses Android 4.2 Icecram Sandwich, so this feature would be usable for me.

        Greets,
        Marco

  7. Good day Sir I bought this app 4 days ago and its a great app but i was wondering if there a way to save the photos directly to my android tablet sd card? It only saves directly to my device memory. Thank you in advance for your response.

    • Hi Frost – This used to be possible, but with the recent versions of Android Google has made it difficult to save files to the SD card instead of internal memory. I hope they change it back in the future!

  9. Hi,

    I love the app! I have tested your app and found less error since it’s using the android platform. I have purchased the app and I’m planning to switch all my booths to it but i just have some suggestions. First thing that I would want to do with the template is being able to slant the frame. I also have noticed that it automatically adds the picture on the first frame on the upper left. Hopefully you can add advanced option for frames on the template in the future.

  10. Hi!
    A great app, works really nice with my Canon 5D mIII and Samsung Tab S 8.4″. My older 450D works as well with the SLR booth app, but it can’t fire a remotely triggered flash and the live view display can be very dark when setting up exposure to use a flash (exposure simulation can’t be turned off in the 450D). Thus, I recommend using an EOS xxD or xD (60D, 70D, 7D, etc) for best results. Or Nikon, which seems to not have those issues.

    One thing where SLR booth is not optimal is when the camera and tablet are portrait mode. Shooting works fine, but in the gallery everything is rotated. The results will be stored 90 rotated on the device, so also 3rd party gallery apps show it 90° rotated.

    Looking forward to an improvement for portrait mode!
    Mario

    • Hi Mario,

      I am also using a EOS 450D for my Photo Booth. The trick to work around the exposure simulation on the EOS 450D is to set the “Exposure Flash synchronization speed in AV” to “1/200 Sec.” in the Custom Settings Menu and turn the Camera to AV Mode.

      The Exposure Simulation in Live View will be now turned off and you can adjust your desired Aperture and ISO. Exposure time will be 1/200 Sec. but anyway that doesn’t matter if you use the flash as the main light source.

      The problem, that the flash can’t be fired remotely with a Non-TTL flash trigger can be solved either using ETTL-Cable or a wireless flash trigger that supports ETTL, like the Yongnuo YN-622C.

      Greets,
      Marco

      • I tried your method of setting the Exposure Flash Sync speed to 1/200 sec in A/V Mode on my Canon 450D, but the flash still did not fire. I am using an ETTL-Cable which works fine when it is not going thru this app. Am I missing something here?

        Thanks,
        Phil

        • What kind of flash are you using? If it’s a non-TTL flash, you’ll need to check the “Stop Live View when taking photo” option in the settings.

          • Hi Greg,

            This is the model that I am using; Neewer TT560 Flash Speedlite for SLR Digital. I would prefer to leave the live view on so that the guests can see their image during the countdown of the photo. Also, here is the non-canon brand of AC power supply I am using that doesn’t seem to work with the slr booth app: Glorich ACK-E5 replacement AC Power Adapter / Charger kit for Canon EOS

            Thanks!

          • The live view will stay on – it just turns off when the actual photo is taken, and back on again after. It causes an extra shutter activation, so it’s a bit more wear and tear on your camera, but it allows third party flashes to fire when using a canon rebel.

  12. Hello ,
    I vien to download your application ( slr booth ) free version to test before the pay verssion .
    I connect the camera ( Nikkon usb d3100 has the tablet samsung galaxi tab A May the screen remains black when I press the star takes the picture may I just do not see (No. immage from camera) and when I reconnect ( code CP -1 12)
    I would like to find the solutionavant take pay verssion . thank you

  13. Hi, i purchase your app. I have Nikon D90 and Galaxy Note 4. When I press the photo button the screen frozen and show message: “downloading file”, next take the photo and show it on screen, but i want to see countdown on screen. I try to change initial photo countdawn, subsequent, shutter delay and still dont show the countdown on screen. What I doing wrong?

  14. Hi,
    I am very happy with your app. I just want to ask you if it’s possible to add a home screen (customisable if possible) that will explain to the user how it works … In this way the DSLR’s sensor will not be exposed all the time and the users will know exactly what does it serve and how to use it.
    Thanks a lot.

  16. Hey. I’m just trying the free-version with my Canon EOS 20D – and all i get – when i try to connect – is a message “Couldn’t open session! Setting PCMode property failed with error code “OperationNotSupported(0x2005)” ”
    Camera is in Normal-mode, in PTP-Mode it is not reccognized by the App. USB-Permissions are granted. OTG is supported (tested with Xperia Z1c / Pipo U8 – both rooted, same result).
    Any suggestions?

  18. Hello,

    first of all I want to say that I’m very happy with your app, it’s a great alternativ to hiring a photo booth.
    Do you know if there’s a possiblity to charge the tablet while it’s connected to the camera?

    Thanks in advance!

    • It depends. Certain tablets are compatible with a USB OTG Y-Cable which will let you charge and use a USB device at the same time. But not all devices support it.

      • Hi Greg,

        thanks a lot for that information!
        Do you know how I can find out if my device is compatible? I’ve got a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, but I can’t find any information if it will work :/

        Thanks again!

  20. Hi,

    I couldn’t find the settings page, is it possible to configure how many photos are printed for each time a photo is shot ?

    Thanks

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