From disposable to slave flash
Disposable cameras have a lot of re-usable electronics in them. The flash unit, for example, is perfectly usable, even after the 27 exposures have come and gone. So what do you do? Well, DIY live decided to turn the disposable camera shell into a slave flashgun.
It ain’t for the faint of heart, this project, but if you are handy with a soldering iron, it may just be of use. Or you could of course buy one. But what’s the fun in that?
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Categories: ? | Do It Yourself | Electronics | Lighting
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This entry is © Haje Jan Kamps / Photocritic.org, and was posted on Monday, April 17th, 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
#1 - April 17th, 2006 at 02:42
Oh goodness… Just be careful!
There is a store up here in Toronto called Active Surplus which sells everything and plastic baby arms. At one point they had a huge bin of just the flash boards (capacitor, flash and related circuitry). Of course, people would pull ‘em out, stick a battery in and try them. Then put them back. The problem is, the capacitor still has a charge in it. I remember sticking my hand in to try and find one, only to be hit by a couple different boards.
The same thing happened with my old digital camera when I tried to take it apart…
#2 - April 17th, 2006 at 22:00
ACTIVE SURPLUS ROCKS! - the Photocritic ‘team’ would love to go around there and see what they could round up- but watch out - they have a giant gorilla outside!
That alone would make me go.
#3 - July 20th, 2006 at 00:21
wolever said: “The problem is, the capacitor still has a charge in it. I remember sticking my hand in to try and find one, only to be hit by a couple different boards.”
That’s true, capacitors can be very dangerous. One of the first things technicians learn is to always short-circuit capacitors before working on them, so they can discharge. Just use a screwdriver or something conductive across the capacitor terminals. Be careful, there might be sparks or metal particles coming out of it, so you should wear glasses when doing this.