When did strobes become common in portraiture?

Roger Hicks said:

But as we both know, Strobe Equipment (I think that was their actual name) is dangerous to work on. I know one mechanic who discharged the residual charge in a Strobe capacitor -- and vapourised the screwdriver he used to short the terminals...

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At the risk of starting a Strobe Equipment Nostalgia thread, there were many stories of the injuries the gear managed to inflict on unsuspecting or incautious assistants – like the guy who tried to pull a plug out without first discharging the pack (he welded it solid). Oddly, I never saw any of these things myself, though a friend once proudly displayed a neatly cauterised hole in his thumb he claimed he got when he accidently caused a flash head to discharge through it. Mmmm!

I vaguely remember visiting David Cecil in his workshop (Cowcross Street?). He always seemed to have a slightly harrassed look. Can't think why....


Richard

In terms of your pic, I'd wager that it was done simply, incandescent bulbs in reflectors. For baby pics and the like those were the most-cost-effective and common in those days. Unless you left out the part about the family summer estate in the background of the photo or something like that.

photogenic

The Photogenic AA series was introduced in the 60s and was a very common system. The first pack allowed the use of 4 heads and used ratio plugs to set the flash balance. All of the heads are nearly indestructable with a minimum of components, and use an automotive signal lamp for modeling. Although these came with parabolic dish reflectors, one can still get the speedring mounts for any soft of softbox arrangement. They are a commonly sold item on fleabay as well.

I have one of these units, and they work well. Its a challenge to find suitable capacitors to rehab them, but these units give a look that is hard to emulate with more modern studio flash equipment. The later AA series supplies allowed two different supplies to be chained together so that eight heads could be used...

PS--It is a good idea to invest in a Wein synch isolator for any of these old strobe systems. They shoot a lot of voltage through the shutter contacts...

bjorke said:

In terms of your pic, I'd wager that it was done simply, incandescent bulbs in reflectors.

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Thanks for everyone's input. No summer estate in this family. We got this instead www.lotus30.com

It's been interesting hearing about the early days too!

Richard Kelham said:

At the risk of starting a Strobe Equipment Nostalgia thread, there were many stories of the injuries the gear managed to inflict on unsuspecting or incautious assistants – like the guy who tried to pull a plug out without first discharging the pack (he welded it solid).

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Those crazy assistants.
A buddy of mine had a (very green) assistant take the sync cord coming from his Minolta Flash Meter and seeing the connector on the end, plugged it straight into a wall outlet. Ouch!

Regards,
Mark