Lightsaber with Modern Flash?

[bvy]

Has anyone adapted a lightsaber with reflector dish to work with a modern flash (i.e. without flash bulbs)? I'm trying to look even cooler and more hipster with my Crown Graphic. Thanks.

 

[EdSawyer]

You'd need a flash tube and probably external battery pack, I doubt any of the lightsaber type flashes have enough space for batteries to trigger a studio-type flashtube. You could disassemble one of the bare-bulb type flashes and rebuild it inside one of those old-style flashes possibly...

 

[shutterfinger]

Look for a Strobe 250 or Strobe 500, both made by Graflex. The battery pack and rechargeable battery pack attached to your belt. The head is on a tube like the 3 cell flash synchronizers.
A Strobe 250 is pictured on the cover of this 1969 brochure http://www.cameraeccentric.com/html/info/graflex_7.html .

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Or just get one of these...

Vintage Stroboflash

Updated with all new modern internal electronics, but using refurbished original hardware and strobe heads.



Ken

 

[Jeff Bradford]

I have successfully extracted the flash circuitry from a disposable camera and installed it in a Polaroid 268 flash. There were two problems:

The electronic flash is not as bright as a flash bulb. The electronic portion of a flash bright enough to substitute for a burning flash bulb is too large to fit into the antique equipment, thus requires external components. If you can live with this, any working electronic flash can be used.

Electronic flash needs X-sync instead of M-sync. You can adjust the camera's metallic flash contacts to trigger the flash when the shutter is wide-open, or you can configure an electronic delay between the camera and the flash. The delay needs to be somewhere between 10 and 25 milliseconds, so make sure you can experiment and adjust. Older flashes dump the entire voltage of the capacitor across the camera's flash contacts. This can fry a simple LR delay network if you don't use robust components. A modern flash uses low voltage in its signal path, so inexpensive components can be used.

Your best bet would be to use ASA-400 film in a camera that already has X-sync so you could install the smallest components inside your original flash equipment.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Why??? The best part is the blinding flash! That is the reason I use those flashguns with real flashbulbs. You sound like someone who thinks film can be replaced by digital photography and the results are the same.

Go sit in the corner for the next 10,000 years! oliceman: