Table Cameras... Yay or Nay?!?!?

I always thought I would have table cameras at my wedding, but now I am not so sure. My FI and I have been discussing this recently and really can't decide. When I have attended other weddings I always bring my own digital camera and if there are table cameras I make sure to take pics with both. I also share the pics with the couple and any friends that would like them. (Can you tell I like pics?) In this day of digital age, I know alot of guests will bring their own cameras. So, here is my dilemma, do we get table cameras or just hope that enough guests bring their own? Would it be tacky/wierd if we got only a few cameras and had them somewhere centralized for people to pick up at their leisure to use?

Any other suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

We decided not to do table cameras. We heard that it end up being too costly since most of the pictures are silly pictures. I read somewhere that one bride end up having pictures of their drunk friends' body parts.

HTH

I would say definitely no. Even if there's just one kid, they'll grab most of them and snap like there's no tomorrow. I think the majority of the pictures would be bad. Might as well leave it to the pros.

I'm on the fence on table cameras. In theory, I think they're so much fun...before the day of digital photos, I can recall going to pick up my prints and being so excited to see what I'd end up with. But, in reality, they're not always so great. One suggestion I read was to have a photo scavenger hunt for your guests. You make a list of photo opps and have your guests try to capture that moment.If you're interested, here's a suggestion from one blogger:http://www.brides.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=40173&messageID=229340)

definityely no! like moemarsita said, the kids will grab most of them. My girlfriend had the camera, and most of the photos turnd out pretty bad.

I was one the fence also, but this post has pushed me to the no side. I think instead I will include a photo card in my welcome packet that has instructions on how users can put their candid photos on a photo site.

I think that's a great idea, Wilcox, and I agree with PP that most people who would take good pictures would probably bring their own cameras. Plus, if candids are important to you, you should definitely let your photog know - they will take much better candids than the guests!

I'd have to agree with everyone. My friend had the disposible cameras on the tables and even though her wedding was outside in the afternoon, the quality of the photos was crap. Most of the photos guests took were of the bride and groom and most of them were poorly composed or random blurry photos or someone's lap or the ground. She ended up paying almost $200 to have the photos developed (on top of the cost of the cameras themselves) and I think she only kept about a dozen or so photos. It just wasn't worth the expense.

With so many people having digital cameras today it's just better to do what Wilcox suggested and have a site set up for guests to upload their photos. We did for our wedding. Only one drawback to that, most of our guests forgot the load photos and we're still tracking down guests who were taking pictures. It's funny to see me going through candid photos, "that guy has a camera! that looks like a nice camera. who is that?"

Good luck!

My opinion is opposite of the concensus -- I didn't want to have them at our wedding for the reasons everyone has already stated, other than the kid factor as we didn't have kids at our wedding. But my husband did, so I bought some when they were on sale.

We didn't get all of them back, and are still hopeful the missing ones will show up, but we loved the pictures we got from them. We included instructions asking folks to not take pictures of us since the pro photographer had that under control, and amazingly ended up with very few of these, unless other folks were in them with us. One thing we found is that our older guests at the reception didn't use them, but my brother (a groomsman) was great about going around and getting folks at different tables to start using them by snapping shots of them. So, I would definitely recommend asking the wedding party and a few members of your immediate family that will know who the relatives are to do this for you.

Several of our friends and family members took pics using their own digital cameras, and other than our parents (who were really too busy to take too many pics), only two friends have sent them to us despite numerous requests. And like you Caribear, I always send the newlyweds the pics I take at their weddings just in the off chance I capture something their photographer didn't get and they would like to have, so I have found the fact that not everyone does this (even when asked) somewhat of a bummer.

We didn't have them for the reasons above but we created a shared site on Snapfish where people could upload their digital pictures. Many people brought their own digital cameras (we asked them to do so too) and two days after the wedding, we already had 400+ photos uploaded on the website. It was great to have the pictures right away while we waited for the pictures from our photographer. And it doesn't cost anything! We had cards with the URL for the Snapfish group room at each guest's dinner seat so they knew where to submit the pictures.