Disposable cameras at a wedding: film cameras or an app?

How each option works

Disposable film cameras. You put one camera on each table, or pass a few around. The next day, you take the cameras to a lab and wait for the films to be developed and scanned.

The app. Guests scan a QR code and take photos with their own phone; the photos arrive in a shared album. Festiroll follows the disposable principle: a limited number of photos per guest, and all the photos revealed at the time the couple choose.

Cost

For disposables, count the price of one camera per table, plus developing and scanning, and allow extra for cameras that don't come back. The cost rises with the number of guests, and each film usually has 27 exposures.

With an app, guests use their own phones: the price doesn't depend on the number of cameras. With Festiroll, the album is free for up to 10 guests; beyond that, a single price per event, from CHF 4.90 to CHF 49.–, no subscription. The Big party plan takes up to 250 guests. Details are on the prices page.

Compare for the same number of guests: that is where the difference shows.

Developing and waiting

With disposables, you have to collect the cameras at the end of the evening, find a lab that still develops film, then wait anything from a few days to a few weeks. If a camera is forgotten, taken home by a guest or opened by mistake, the film is lost.

With an app, each photo is sent during the party. In Disposable camera mode, Festiroll keeps the photos hidden until the time you set, for example the next day at brunch or after the honeymoon. Until then, each guest sees only their own photos.

Photo quality

A disposable has a fixed lens, no focusing, and 400 or 800 ISO film. Outdoors in daylight, the result has charm: warm colours, grain, a bit of chance. Indoors in the evening, the flash only reaches a few metres and photos of the dance floor are often dark or blurred. You find out when the film is developed.

A recent phone copes better in low light, focuses on its own and lets you retake a failed shot. The image is sharper, but more ordinary: if it's the look of film you like, no app truly reproduces it.

Then there's the number. A few films of 27 exposures give a few hundred photos at best. All the guests' phones often give more, taken everywhere: getting ready, the garden, the dance floor, the end of the evening.

Environmental impact

Neither option is neutral.

A disposable means a plastic body, a battery for the flash and the chemicals used for developing. Some manufacturers collect the bodies through labs to reuse or recycle them, depending on the lab you choose.

An app adds no object, but it uses energy to send and store the photos. With Festiroll, the album is stored in Switzerland and deleted on the planned date: files nobody uses aren't kept indefinitely.

If the environment weighs in your choice, the most effective step is to limit the equipment bought for a single evening.

At a glance

• Cost: per camera and per film for disposables; once per event for the app.
• Timing: a lab and a wait for disposables; with the app, the reveal is set to the hour.
• Photos: the charm of film in daylight, but trouble in the evening; with phones, sharper and more numerous images.
• The object: a disposable can be kept and decorates the table; an app can't.

Why not both?

Nothing stops you from putting out a few disposables for the pleasure of the object, and leaving the album's QR code on the tables for the rest.

For setting up, read Wedding photo album with a QR code: how it works and How to collect all your guests' photos. A wedding album is shown on the Wedding page, and the full service on the Festiroll home page.