Those lower end flashes

[bwfans]

The probelm is I have too many low end flashes after many years of collecting cameras. I found those low end flashes never broke but also not useful.

My question is, any use of those flashes? I wish them can be used on Christmas trees .

 

[nickandre]

by low end do you mean fixed output or auto thyristor ones?

if you buy that luminescent paper you can make temporary images with flashes and your hand or whatever.

 

[2F/2F]

IMHO, they are of use if they can be slaved and you are a commercial photographer who may need to place small light sources within a shot (A.K.A. "practicals"). They are also much more useful for this purpose if they have variable power, though you can use ND filters to lower their brightness. Otherwise, I would get rid of them. I keep a few tiny Vivitars around, but have unloaded all the units other than my Sunpaks for actual on-camera use. I am not a commercial photographer, but I used one of them one time for a shoot in which I needed a glow of a certain color and intensity to be emanating from a computer screen that was shot from the back. I bounced a tiny Vivitar into a white mat board that was covering the screen. I used gels to color the light slightly blue, diffusion to soften the light and broaden the beam, and ND to reduce the intensity to the right level.

 

[Mike Wilde]

Cobble enough of them together all set to full blast on manual with el cheapo slaves, and they can be vaible to fill the lighting needs of a small DIY soft box.

I had four such units firing into a home made 24x36 soft box made from white foam core, with a face of drafting mylar for a diffuser.

I peeled the reflectors out of four small (guide number less than 50 (in feet) units I had littering my orphan camera bits storage box and propped the bare flash tube out on little supports fashioned from clear drinking straw bits assembled using a hot melt glue gun. Later on I added two more to bring the complement to 6. They were held in place with rubber bands that wrapped around a pair of dowels that enterd the rea of the soft box. Other dowels supported the box, and all dowles were drilled into a spruce block thatwas attached to a clamp to attach it to the light stand. It was not pretty, but was built for under $70, most of which was for camera show purchased slaves.

I used a PC power supply from an old surplus computer that was being tossed at work to power the all flashes. I made power blocks from whitled spruce to emulate 4-aa's to put the power terminals in the right spots in the different battery compartments. The power supply was hung on on the bottom of the support stand to act as ballast, and would pump out up to 20A at 5v if you needed it to, so the recycle time even with 6 flashes being fed from it was very short. It also did not get longer as batteries age, as is so often the case with 4-aa flash units.

That DIY kluge got me though the first three years of trying to do a better job with lighting for head shot portraits. It just did not fold down to travel easily. It gave great light at about 3-4' from a subject, and allowed for a moderate aperture for groups of two whan needed. If I needed less light to open up the aperture and cut DOF, I would reach in and switch off two or three flashes.

I tossed it a few years ago after the kids were both in school, and my wife went back to work, and hence cash flow was not as cramped.

I bought a used commercially made soft box and potato masher flash head and pack to replace the old rubber bands and twine contrivance. It did do what I wanted it to, but it did not put me in 'semi-pro' eyes when my clients saw it.

 

[David William White]

There you go!

 

[bwfans]

Thanks Mike and everyone for the replies. It seems a lot of fun when there is a bunch of slave units are available. I will start collecting those slaves - I think I have 4 already and if I can get 8-12 then it will be some fun. It probably can light a big room, or make a softbox from it. I will just use the battery - those AA batteries.

 

[Dan Fromm]

Tiny little fixed-output flashes with ISO 100/feet GNs < 40 are just the things for closeup work.

Re combining identical flashes, it quickly gets impractical. 1 flash, GN = x; 2 flashes, GN = 1.4x, i.e., 1 stop more; 4 flashes, GN = 2x, i.e., 2 stops more; 8 flashes, GN = 2.8x, 3 stops; 16 flashes, GN =4x, 4 stops; 32 flashes, ...

 

[CGW]

This site is built around the use of speedlights and other on-camera flashes for film and digital studio/location shooting:

www.strobist.com

 

[Athiril]

The probelm is I have too many low end flashes after many years of collecting cameras. I found those low end flashes never broke but also not useful.

My question is, any use of those flashes? I wish them can be used on Christmas trees .

I had all my Sunpak 433 AF's/D's break on me after usage.

I am now using YongNuo YN-460 II's off ebay and love them to bits, they are brilliant.. no zoom, but thats my only complaint.