Photobooth Amsterdam
Where the film booths really are, and the order we would walk them in
Every travel piece about Amsterdam photo booths sends you to the Jordaan, to some candlelit brown café with a machine by the toilets. Our listings do not back that up. The chemical booths we can point to are on Zeedijk, along the canal belt, and across the water in Noord, and that is where this walk goes.
Start on Zeedijk
Two booths sit on the same stretch of Zeedijk, a few minutes’ walk from Centraal Station. Analogue is at number 80 and Nishi is at 89. Both are marked analog in our records, and both take cash.
That makes Zeedijk the cheapest test in the city. Feed one machine, cross over to the other while the first strip sits in the tanks, and you will know inside ten minutes whether the chemistry in Amsterdam is fresh this week or tired. Fresh developer gives deep blacks. Tired developer gives a soft charcoal grey, which some people prefer and nobody expects.
Read the two strips side by side once they are dry. Look at the shadow under each chin and at the darkest part of the backdrop. If one strip has a true black there and the other has a muddy brown, you have learned something about the tanks, and probably about which machine had a busy weekend. Neither strip is wrong. They are just different nights in the life of the chemistry.
Go early in the day.
The canal belt
From Zeedijk, walk west across the Dam toward the Singel. Three stops sit inside the ring, and they are close enough that the whole loop is a morning, not a day.
Boothclub Amsterdam
A short lane off the Singel, and a room built around its booths rather than a bar with one machine in the corner. Boothclub Amsterdam mixes chemical and digital units, so look before you pay. Our guide to mixed booth rooms covers how to tell them apart.
Boothclub Garage
The reason to come to Amsterdam at all, if you care about the machines themselves. The Garage keeps a Model 12 from a production run that went from 1958 to 1964, and a Model 17 built in 1967. Same operator as Raamsteeg, separate room, separate stop. Sit back from the lens in the old cabinets. Their focus was set for one adult looking straight ahead, and leaning in to fit a friend turns your nose soft.
The Hoxton, and the €8 strip
The Hoxton’s booth is black and white, listed as open 24 hours, and the only Amsterdam booth in our directory whose listing says it takes cards. It is also the most expensive at €8. We think that is a fair trade at two in the morning, when every other machine on this page is behind a locked door, and a poor one at noon, when Zeedijk is open and takes coins.
Nobody has ever regretted bringing too many coins to Amsterdam.
Across the IJ to Noord
Take the ferry from behind Centraal. On the far bank, The Butcher Social Club at Overhoeksplein 1 has a booth our records mark as analog, and Pllek on T.T. Neveritaweg is further along the waterfront.
Noord is the evening half of the day. The Butcher Social Club’s listing shows it closed on Mondays and opening at five the rest of the week, so a Monday crossing gets you a nice boat ride and nothing else.
Any other day, cross. The flash inside the cabinet is the same as in town, but the people sitting in front of it are not: a booth in a loud bar at eleven at night gets faces that a quiet hotel corridor at noon never sees, and that difference shows up on the strip more than any chemistry does. Bring a jacket for the ferry back.
Vondelpark, De Pijp and the listings we cannot vouch for yet
Proeflokaal ’t Blauwe Theehuis, at Vondelpark 5, is marked analog and makes a good excuse to sit in the park while your strip dries. That one we are confident about.
The rest of the city is less settled. We list booths at Hutspot on Van Woustraat, The Student Hotel on Wibautstraat, Love Stories Archive on Gerard Doustraat, Lab111 in Oud-West and Meneer Nieges on Westerdoksdijk, but none of those listings yet says whether the machine develops film or prints from a camera file. Some of them may well be chemical. We would rather say we do not know than guess. Before you build a day around one, open the listing, and once you are standing in front of the cabinet, run the checks in how to spot a real analog photo booth. If you find out, tell us, and the listing gets fixed for the next person.
One more: Studio K on Timorplein is marked inactive. Skip it.
If Amsterdam is one stop of several
The full Amsterdam list, with a map and the hours we hold for each machine, is on our Amsterdam photo booth guide, and the Amsterdam photo booth tour draws the stops as a route. If France is next, the Paris photo booth guide does the same job there. Germany and Austria, where the street-corner Fotoautomat is still common, have their own page.
People who fall for the Model 12 at the Garage tend to end up planning trips around old machines, and the strangest of those trips is Texas, where Photomatica runs a photo booth museum in Houston. For everywhere else, start from photo booths near me or browse the whole analog photo booth directory.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the best photobooth in Amsterdam?
For old hardware, Boothclub Garage at Prinsengracht 673, which keeps a Model 12 from the 1958 to 1964 production run and a Model 17 built in 1967. For a booth you can reach at any hour, the Hoxton on Herengracht 255, which our listing has as open 24 hours.
Do Amsterdam photo booths take cards?
Mostly no. Of the Amsterdam booths in our directory, the Hoxton is the only one whose listing says it accepts cards, and it is also the dearest at €8 a strip. Everywhere else, bring coins.
Are there analog photo booths in the Jordaan?
Not in our records. The nearest are Boothclub Garage on the Prinsengracht, at the Jordaan’s edge, and Meneer Nieges on Westerdoksdijk, north of it. If you know a working chemical booth inside the Jordaan, send it to us and we will add it.
Is Studio K on Timorplein still worth the trip?
Our listing marks the Studio K booth as inactive, so no. Check the listing before you go in case that changes, but do not plan a ride out to Oost around it.
Plan the walk
Booth Beacon tracks 1,349 booths across 29 countries. Read the listing before you set off, because a booth that was working in spring can be waiting on a part by autumn.