Home-Made Flash

[TMuhammad]

Are these even possible? Probably not. But I'm open to suggestions. I couldn't find any, but I'll keep checking.

[TPF Sponsor]

[cgipson1]

Entirely possible, if you know anything about building circuits...

Here is a basic board



Here is another...

[cnutco]

All things produced, had to start somewhere!

[unpopular]

There used to be a very comprehensive website on this topic. This isn't really a beginner's project. Even with relatively small strobes, you'll be dealing with quite a lot of voltage.

ETA:

That Kodak MAX Flash seems a little bit scary. I don't think you'll electrocute yourself or anything like that, but you might do some damage to your equiptment if something goes wrong... D1 should prevent too much disaster, if I'm looking at it right. But you still might want to put in some kind of physical isolation at S2.

It might be perfectly safe, I'm not an engineer. But I wouldn't want to put something I built from that schematic on my camera.

[TMuhammad]

Thanks for the help. I'll see what I can do with that circuit board. If anything.

[Horngreen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mxosDz8678

flash powder!

[SCraig]

There used to be a very comprehensive website on this topic. This isn't really a beginner's project. Even with relatively small strobes, you'll be dealing with quite a lot of voltage.

ETA:

That Kodak MAX Flash seems a little bit scary. I don't think you'll electrocute yourself or anything like that, but you might do some damage to your equiptment if something goes wrong... D1 should prevent too much disaster, if I'm looking at it right. But you still might want to put in some kind of physical isolation at S2.

It might be perfectly safe, I'm not an engineer. But I wouldn't want to put something I built from that schematic on my camera.

I'm not an engineer either but I used to tinker with electronics a lot.

The circuit should be relatively safe since the triggering is being done through a coil. I'm sure Kodak thought it out pretty thoroughly, and it appears that the high-voltage side is isolated from the trigger circuit by the coil itself.

I would recommend a diode place in series with the trigger though. When the field in a coil collapses it can induce a high-voltage spike back into the opposite side of the coil. A simple diode will prevent that from damaging anything.