Booth assembly and teardown

1. Base plate on the floor, longer half facing away from the backdrop and away from where guests will stand.
2. Run the AC cable under the base plate and up through the center hole. Feed about two arms' length through before going on, or you will be pulling cable through three poles later. If wired printing, the printer USB cable goes through the same hole.
3. Run the cable up through the first pole.
4. Seat the first pole on the base plate and tighten both knobs at the same time until finger tight. Then loosen and set the knobs into an X shape.
5. Repeat for the second pole.
6. Leave 1 to 2 inches of cable coming out the top of the poles.

The X shape on the knobs is not cosmetic: it is what lets the next part seat. If the head or the CHIPS platform will not sit, check the knobs first.

1. Loosen the screw on the back of the head and remove the rear door. Put it somewhere flat.
2. Lift the head and plug the AC cable, and the printer USB if used, into the bottom of it.
3. Place the head on the top pole with the iPad and camera facing the backdrop, which is toward where guests stand.
4. Fully tighten the knobs inside the head.
5. Plug the AC cable into the Ecoflow, and the Ecoflow into the outlet. The booth never plugs straight into venue power.
6. Check the Belkin surge protector inside the head: "Protected" lit green, and no light on "Not Grounded". If "Not Grounded" lights, that outlet is unsafe for the booth. Find another.
7. Camera power switch on. Confirm it has power.

The surge protector check still matters with the battery inline. It confirms the head is receiving clean, grounded power from the Ecoflow. If "Not Grounded" lights with the battery in the chain, the fault is in the battery's output or the booth cable, not the venue, and that is worth knowing before guests arrive.

Do not touch the horseshoe flash tube with bare skin. Skin oil damages it permanently. The black cover stays on until the flash is on the pole.

1. Flash pole out of the case, screwed into the nut on top of the head.
2. Pull back the quick-release and rotate the black cover off the flash.
3. Reflector dome onto the flash, rotated to lock. Line the slit in the reflector up with the umbrella mount on the flash handle.
4. Loosen the large tilt handle, set the pole mount to 90 degrees from the flash, retighten.
5. Loosen the small pole-mount knob until the internal screw is not visible looking down the mount.
6. Flash onto the pole, bulb facing the back of the booth, tighten the small knob.
7. Loosen the large tilt handle again, angle the flash 45 degrees upward, retighten.
8. Open the umbrella. Slide its pole through the reflector slit and through the umbrella mount, until about a quarter inch extends past the flash.

The MS300V has an LED modeling disc built in; there is no separate modeling bulb to fit. Our rule from the photography manual: key modeling lamp off at events, because it shines into guests' eyes at the mark.

1. Coiled sync cable into the flash. Flash power cable in.
2. Switch on the back to the line position.
3. Short-press the volume button to silence the beeps. Do this every time. A beeping flash at a wedding is unprofessional, and at a sensory booking it is disqualifying.
4. Set power. The factory default is 1/2. Ours is whatever the meter says at the mark, which with the umbrella is usually 1/4 to 1/2. See the photography manual.
5. Turn the wireless receiver off: hold GR/CH and S1/S2 together until the wireless tower icon disappears from the top left of the screen.

Step five is a client promise, not a preference. We tell couples our flash cannot cross-fire with their photographer's. That is only true with the receiver off and the flash wired. Check the icon is gone before the first test fire, at every event.

A stopped printer never stops the booth. Sessions continue, captures are saved, and prints come out once it is fixed. Tell the queue their print is coming, keep taking photos, and fix it between sessions. Never turn people away because of a printer.

Most stoppages are one of three things, and in this order: paper, ribbon, connection. Check them in that order because that is also the order of how often they happen.

The ribbon is what we call the toner. Same thing. A dye-sub printer has no toner; the color is on a ribbon that runs over the paper. Support will say ribbon, the box says ribbon, so this page does too.

Always carry a spare roll and a spare ribbon, together, at every event. They come as a matched pair in one box and they run out together. A booth with no spare is one roll away from not printing, and it is on the load-out list as critical for that reason.

Before starting: iPadOS updated, Fiesta updated, logged into the Fiesta account. Do this at home, not at the venue, because it needs the internet and time.

1. Head out of the front of the case, onto the case's fabric flap.
2. Base plate, cables and accessories out.
3. First pole out. Power cable through the bottom of the base plate, then through the first pole's cable conduit. Fasten the pole to the base plate.
4. Second pole: cable through its conduit, fasten to the first pole and the base plate.
5. Remaining cable through the rubber grommet at the base of the neck.
6. Open the head with the roamer release lever.
7. Power cable into the USB-C on the back of the roamer unit.
8. Power cable to the power supply, power supply to the extension, extension to the battery, battery to the wall.
9. Close the head.

iPad

1. Allen wrench from the case. Four screws out, faceplate off.
2. USB-C into the iPad. iPad into the front plate.
3. Faceplate back on, four screws in.

The factory footprint for SALSA 2 is about 10 ft wide by 5 ft deep, with the booth 3 ft from the backdrop and at least 2 ft behind it for guests to pass. That 3 ft figure is where the earlier guest-mark confusion came from: it is the SnapBliss distance, not the Luxelle one.

A drop-off SALSA 2 gets one chance. Nobody is there to notice a problem, so the test captures at setup are the entire quality check. Take more than you would on a staffed booth, and send one to your own phone to prove delivery works before you leave. The booth joins our hotspot, network luxelle, password luxelleair, unless the client has arranged venue wifi and it has been tested.

Photobooth Supply Co's recommended body settings, from their R100 setup page. Most of these are set once and survive events. They do not survive a factory reset, which is why they are here.

The one deliberate departure: focus. The factory setting is autofocus with face tracking and continuous AF. The photography manual locks focus manually at the guest mark and tapes the ring. Both work; they solve different problems. Autofocus copes with guests at varying distances and needs no tape, but can hunt in a dark room and miss on a group. Manual at the mark never hunts and is identical every frame, but is wrong for anyone who does not stand on the mark. The manual chose manual because the mark is taped and the lights are metered to it. If the camera is ever reset to factory, it comes back on autofocus, and that is the setting to check first.

If manual focus is the standard, write which way in the event log so a soft gallery can be traced. If autofocus is used for a specific event, say a corporate crowd with no mark, note it the same way and switch the AF method to Zone for the group.

Fiesta runs on a default iPad. These settings are not required, but every one of them prevents a specific failure at an event, and most of those failures look like "the booth stopped working" from across the room. Photobooth Supply Co's page with screenshots for each is here.

Two of these are the drop-off insurance. A passcode and Find My are what stand between a SALSA 2 left overnight at a client's venue and an iPad that is simply gone. Your insurer excludes theft by someone you entrusted the equipment to, so the iPad's own security is the only protection there is.

Restarting it inside the booth

The iPad's power button is on its top edge, and once the iPad is in the booth the shell covers it. There is a small opening in the shell that lines up with the button, and it only admits a toothpick. That is why a toothpick lives in each booth kit and never leaves it.

1. Toothpick through the opening, press and hold the power button until the power-off slider appears on screen. On newer iPads, hold the top button and a volume button together.
2. Slide to power off. Wait a full ten seconds.
3. Toothpick again, press and hold until the Apple logo appears.
4. Unlock with the passcode, open Fiesta, sign in if it asks.

If the toothpick is missing, a straightened paperclip works but scratches. A pen does not fit. Do not try to lift the faceplate to reach the button; that is four screws and an Allen wrench for something a toothpick does in five seconds.

Assets re-download after a restart. Budget for it.

Every time Fiesta is opened fresh, the iPad is restarted, or the event configuration is changed, the event's assets have to download again before the event can start: the template, the overlay, the attract screen, any intro video. On the hotspot that takes a minute or two for a simple event and longer for one with video. It is not stuck; it is downloading.

Fiesta runs a System Check screen when you start the event. It confirms the assets are downloaded, whether it can see the printer, whether Guided Access is running, and other readiness items. Watch it to the end. It can be skipped, and skipping it is how an event opens with last week's template or no printer. If an item is not green, fix it before opening the booth, not after the first guest.

• Assets not downloaded: wait. If it stalls, check the iPad is actually online, then back out to the dashboard and start again.
• Printer not recognized: see the printer section below before touching anything else.
• Guided Access not detected: the setting is on but no session is running. Triple-click the top button with Fiesta open.

This is why configuration changes are made the day before, on the laptop, and not at the venue. A change at the venue costs a download at the venue, on the hotspot, with guests arriving.

The symptom: you can open Fiesta, see the event, configure it, but there is no option to start it. Everything looks normal except the one button that matters.

What it means: this iPad does not currently hold a Fiesta license. A license is what lets an iPad start an in-person event; configuring does not need one. Each license is assigned to one iPad when that iPad logs into the Fiesta app, and it stays assigned until the device is removed from the account. So the license is almost always sitting on another device.

In order, cheapest first

1. Internet. The app has to reach the account to confirm the license. Check the iPad is on the hotspot and actually online, then close and reopen Fiesta.
2. Which account is logged in. Sign out of Fiesta and sign back into our account. A previous login on this iPad to a trial or a different account will show events you cannot start.
3. Where the license went. On the laptop, open the Fiesta web app, Account Management, Devices. Every iPad holding a license is listed. If a second iPad, an old one, or a phone used for testing is on that list, it is holding the license this booth needs. Remove it. The license frees immediately. Then sign the booth iPad out and back in.
4. How many licenses we have. One license runs one in-person event at a time. The sharing station does not use a license. If GUAC and SALSA 2 are both running full events at the same time at different venues, that is two licenses, and we need to own two. Check the subscription in Account Management.
5. The subscription itself. If billing lapsed, nothing starts. That also shows in Account Management, and it is Customer Success, not Customer Experience, who fixes it: software@photoboothsupplyco.com.

This is one of the things the laptop is for. Account Management is a web page, and removing a stale device from the list takes thirty seconds on a laptop and is awkward on the booth iPad. Do it before guests arrive; the sharing station and the event configuration are fine while you sort it, the booth just cannot open.

Prevent it: never log into Fiesta on a spare device to test something and leave it logged in. That device will silently take the license, and the booth will refuse to start at the next event. If you have to test on another device, sign it out afterward, or remove it from Devices the same day.

Confirm the last session is done with the client or coordinator before anything is switched off. Never pack early in front of guests.

1. iPad off, through the iPad's own settings.
2. Rear door off, onto a flat surface.
3. Camera off, power switch on top.
4. Flash off, switch on the back.
5. Unplug the booth from the wall.
6. Sync and power cables off the flash.
7. Black cover back onto the flash, secured with the quick-release. Then the flash comes off the pole, the pole unscrews from the head.
8. Umbrella, flash, reflector and flash pole into the case.
9. Head off the poles. Foam insert on top of the poles before the head goes in, then head into the case front-down.
10. Poles off the base plate, cable pulled through, everything into the case.

The camera can stay in the head for transport. Only remove it if there is a reason.

Customer Experience, for anything technical

The team to call when a booth, printer or the Fiesta app is misbehaving.

• Email: support@photoboothsupplyco.com
• Phone: 949-444-2752, extension 1
• Support site: support.photoboothsupplyco.com. The assembly videos, the Fiesta guides and the print settings all live there.

Customer Success, for the account and for training

Software account questions, billing, and one-on-one training sessions. Not the number for a broken booth.

• Email: software@photoboothsupplyco.com
• Success calls are booked through their site.

Sales

Our rep is Flavio Inzurriaga, flavio@photoboothsupplyco.com. He is the contact for a next booth, and for anything where it is unclear who to ask. As a returning customer, go through him rather than the website.

At an event, the only number that matters is Customer Experience, extension 1. Before calling, have the serial number ready; it is on the device and the support site has an article on where to find it for each booth.

The laptop

A charged laptop travels to every event, for emergencies. Some configuration changes cannot be made from the iPad mid-event: a Fiesta account setting, a template that has to be rebuilt, a print size in the AirConnect portal that is easier on a full screen, or a support call where they need to see the dashboard. The laptop is how those get fixed at the venue instead of after it.

It is on the load-out list as critical for that reason. Charged before leaving, and the Fiesta login already saved on it.