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.