Flash bulb addiction

[BillBingham2]

Flash bulbs have a wonderful magical power, they are slow. So slow that you can actually paint with them. Takes some practice but you can change the look of shadows by moving them in an arc rather than keeping them still.

I've been wondering with LED light sources if I could do the same with a digital camera and a slower shutter speed.

You can make all sorts of funky reflectors for bulbs. I seem to remember something about the original light sabers being based upon the an old flashbulb gun.......

B2 (;->

 

[x-ray]

Flash bulbs have a wonderful magical power, they are slow. So slow that you can actually paint with them. Takes some practice but you can change the look of shadows by moving them in an arc rather than keeping them still.

I've been wondering with LED light sources if I could do the same with a digital camera and a slower shutter speed.

You can make all sorts of funky reflectors for bulbs. I seem to remember something about the original light sabers being based upon the an old flashbulb gun.......

B2 (;->

I've painted with tungsten sources and strobes. Using tungsten and a long enough exposure and keeping the light moving you can eliminate shadows.

 

[BillBingham2]

Why, what could happen?

Something about the large amount of static electricity on the flight decks and flash bulbs not being very picky about where the electricity comes from that fires them off.

My first photo teacher in High School burning a chunk of magnesium (the insides of flash bulbs) he held up on tongs while I shot a picture of him f16 at 1/30 of a second. Talk about not needing a meter!

They don't stop action, but they do yield a wonder light. I have a gun I hacked with a longer PC cord, had a wonderful satin finish, very cool. All sorts of covers to help defuse the harshness.

B2 (;->

 

[skucera]

My Leica M3 came with its original flash unit, so I replaced the dead electrolytic capacitors with solid state caps, found a battery, and started using it at Thanksgiving and Christmas family events, just like my dad and grandpa did when I was a kid. My mom and aunt both commented that they forgot how bright flashbulbs were.

I also found a Konica flashcube flash at a thrift shop. It was a trick to find the little battery it used, but it works really well too, but only half of the light output. The convenience of four flashes with a twist of the cube is pretty addicting. The look of the photos is cool too, strangely colorful compared to strobe flash pictures.

Scott

 

[skucera]

Flash bulbs have a wonderful magical power, they are slow. So slow that you can actually paint with them. Takes some practice but you can change the look of shadows by moving them in an arc rather than keeping them still.

I've been wondering with LED light sources if I could do the same with a digital camera and a slower shutter speed.

LED's have a strobing duty cycle that can be tricky to sync to a digital camera. The cameras in mobile computers I test at work usually have that sync problem on early builds, usually because the junior developer is assigned to camera and flash integration. The pictures end up with horizontal dark bands.

I think (and hope) that the photo flood lights using LED's have been specially developed to always have some LED's lit while others are turned off and cooling.

Scott

 

[PKR]

When I was at the DOE I did some ultra high speed motion picture work. I shot many assignments at 44,000 frames per second looking at explosive detonations. To give you an idea of how fast this is the shutter speed was 1/100,000 of a second and 400 ft of film would go through the camera in 1/10 of a second. Fast? Yes! .

High speed Mitchell?

 

[sevo]

I have a Navy photographers mate 2 manual and they warn against having flash bulbs in your pocket on the flight deck.

There can be no other place in the world where it is quite as likely to walk into a high power radar beam at that close a distance...

 

[David Hughes]

Amazing the number of people who don't read the instructions on the pack ;-)

Sorry about the poor lighting, I didn't want to use flash just in case my last box of vintage bulbs went up in flames...


Regards, David

 

[x-ray]

High speed Mitchell?

Redlake Hycam. Also used a Wollensak Fastax but it wasn't nearly as fast.

 

[x-ray]

There were different "classes" of bulbs. Each class had a different ignition time to reach peak and a different peak duration.

Common types were M class which were used with leaf shutters mainly. You'll notice on older leaf shutters both X and M sync. Sync was usually selected with a small mechanical switch.

There was FP bulbs that had even a different ignition time to peak and a very long peak for use with focalplane shutters.

There also was S class which were gas filled rather than magnesium or zirconium. S class were again different rise to peak times and duration of peak. These were common but used more in commercial applications. I've owned older view camera lenses in Wollensak and Ilex shutters with S sync on them although I've never used them.

I think there were even a couple more classes of bulbs but I've never seen any that I was aware of.

The small bulbs with bayonette bases like the #5 & 25 were designed to be triggered with voltages up to 22v roughly. Screw base bulbs like the #3 and #11 could be triggered with up to 115v.

A word of caution if photographing people with flash bulbs. Bulbs can burst when fired. I've had it happen several times. There's a plastic coating on the outside of the bulb but occasionally they burst sending fragments of glass at your subject. In the day several companies made flipup acrylic protectors that mounted on the reflector of your flash.

 

[PKR]

Redlake Hycam. Also used a Wollensak Fastax but it wasn't nearly as fast.

There was a super high speed camera that didn't have any claws. The film just traveled through the gate at high speed. I'm not familiar with those two you mention. Was one of those that type of camera?

I was told a story about a guy who had a case of 50B bulbs in the back of his car. He was on a highway that passed through an antenna field that belonged to a radio mfg company. The bulbs went off and he got out of his car before it burned up. The radio company wrote him a check for the damage (cost to replace his car) on the spot.

 

[David Hughes]

Just remembered this photo:-

The big blue bulb came out of the pack in my previous photo; they came in packs of four that I photo'ed and three packs would then fit a sleeve to sell you a dozen. There were also capless bulbs even smaller than the on the left.

I also remembered that there were bulbs with blobs of a sort of paste in them that were filled at low pressure with oxygen.

Regards, David

 

[MrFujicaman]

Why, what could happen?

\

The radar on the flight deck of a carrier might set them off.

 

[PKR]

\

The radar on the flight deck of a carrier might set them off.

Ya think..?

A friend was a radar tech on a Navy surveillance ship posted in the Pacific. He said the radar was so powerful that if seagulls were in the antennas path as it made its sweep of the horizon... that they would explode in mid air when 10m or nearer the main antenna.

 

[sevo]

There was a super high speed camera that didn't have any claws. The film just traveled through the gate at high speed. I'm not familiar with those two you mention. Was one of those that type of camera?

Most ultra-high-speed cameras were permanent motion, the image being stabilized by rotating prisms or mirrors - no perforation would survive the acceleration and deceleration needed to step film frame-wise at a rate of 400ft a second. Conventional pin-register "high speed" cameras ("speed" Arris and Mitchells) did not go beyond 500fps - and would only achieve that with Estar base film (the specified safe limit with acetate was something like 1/4 of that).

 

[JoeV]

Ya think..?

A friend was a radar tech on a Navy surveillance ship posted in the Pacific. He said the radar was so powerful that if seagulls were in the antennas path as it made its sweep of the horizon... that they would explode in mid air when 10m or nearer the main antenna.

I remember operating a portable Sony Betacam video recorder/camera on the flight deck of the Connie. The ship's radar atop the island would cause the tape transport to flake out and rewind/fast-forward itself intermittently, as the EM radiation induced stray signals into the circuit boards. I suppose they were unshielded circuits.

And it's best not to think of the effect upon biological systems. But that's why we have the Veterans Administration, right? Yea, right!

 

[PKR]

Most ultra-high-speed cameras were permanent motion, the image being stabilized by rotating prisms or mirrors - no perforation would survive the acceleration and deceleration needed to step film frame-wise at a rate of 400ft a second. Conventional pin-register "high speed" cameras ("speed" Arris and Mitchells) did not go beyond 500fps - and would only achieve that with Estar base film (the specified safe limit with acetate was something like 1/4 of that).

How big were the film magazines? At a super high frame rate a lot of film must pass through the gate. My knowledge stops at 400ft (Arriflex 35 & BL). I've seen Mitchell HS but never in use.

 

[PKR]

I remember operating a portable Sony Betacam video recorder/camera on the flight deck of the Connie. The ship's radar atop the island would cause the tape transport to flake out and rewind/fast-forward itself intermittently, as the EM radiation induced stray signals into the circuit boards. I suppose they were unshielded circuits.

And it's best not to think of the effect upon biological systems. But that's why we have the Veterans Administration, right? Yea, right!

My friend said corrosion would build up on the antenna driven element and techs would climb up to the antenna and while in a fixed position at (I hope) reduced power file the corrosion build up off the element while it being monitored below. Not a job I would want. I also heard stories from a photographer friend who was stationed in Greenland's over the horizon station. He said personal would stand in front of the antennas to "warm up" in severe below zero temps when having to work outside on repairs .. scary.

 

[sevo]

How big were the film magazines? At a super high frame rate a lot of film must pass through the gate. My knowledge stops at 400ft (Arriflex 35 & BL).

1000ft magazines are common, and I've seen longer ones listed at high-speed rental places. Quite often it was only 400ft though. Most things photographed at that speed have a very short duration, so that the action would cover less than a minute worth of film at 24fps in any case. The most complex features of these cameras are its trigger computers that start the experiment timed so that all the action occurs in the brief moment when the camera has accelerated and the film has not yet run out.

 

[PKR]

1000ft magazines are common, and I've seen longer ones listed at high-speed rental places. Quite often it was only 400ft though. Most things photographed at that speed have a very short duration, so that the action would cover less than a minute worth of film at 24fps in any case. The most complex features of these cameras are its trigger computers that start the experiment timed so that all the action occurs in the brief moment when the camera has accelerated and the film has not yet run out.

Yes, I imagine sensor and sensor placement are critical.

I helped a friend rig a Champaign bottle to trip flash units for the Christening of a ship. We taped a piece of copper that was wired to a time delay and taped to the bottle. Contact with the hull made the circuit and fired the flash and shutter. We found that contact to hull (the other half of the circuit) was good enough to make the very sensitive circuit. We had a programmable time delay built in to wait micro seconds for flying glass. It worked well after many set-ups. It was shot 8x10.. lots of fuss for the big format.