Cheap or Makeshift Slave Sensors/Lighting...

[ronf89]

Hi, I'm new to this place and I have a question that I'm sure someone can help me out with.

Okay, I'm 18 years old, going to be a senior in high school, and our video club director borrowed me a Canon EOS 20D for the summer, and I want to attempt to take my own senior photos this fall. However, the techniques that I was looking up that I kind of liked require a couple of optical slave flashes. Well I'm not looking to spend a whole lot of money on professional lighting equipment because I have other things I need to save money for, so I was wondering if I could make some makeshift optical slave light stands out of some small halogen light bulbs. So this is what I want to do: I want to plug the plugins for the lights into a sensor that senses the master flash from the camera, and when it senses it, allow the slave lights to come on, and then shut off right away as any other flash would. So does anyone know of an optical sensor that has an outlet installed on it that works how I described?

Thanks a lot!
Ron

 

[usayit]

Don't think the halogen bulbs can turn on fast enough to be an effective flash.

You can use halogen bulbs that are just on.... make sure you have the camera on a tripod and take a custom white balance.

 

[Garbz]

This is unfortunately a very serious project and not something easy. You will need xenon tubes, large capacitors with very low ESR, a high voltage transformer and knowledge of how to hook you camera's sync or hotshoe terminals up in a way that you can trigger a 4000V line bearing in mind that more than about 6V could damage the camera. The tube itself needs to be charged to 300V, and even a small flash can give you quite the life threatening shock if not done properly.

I suggest looking at floodlighting. 300-500watt halogens x2 or 3 will give you sufficient brightness but watch it because they are a fire hazard.