We have it so easy now! Astor strobe of the 1960's.

[x-ray]

I got into commercial photography as an apprentice in a studio in the early 70's. I look back at the strobe lighting equipment we used and am amazed at how inefficient and big the strobes were at that time. We had some small (all is relative) Photogenic units but they didn't put out much light and were mainly for portraits and small products when we didn't use hot lights. For bigger stuff we had Ascor 800 series units with Clortran / Ascor soft lights. These were aluminum and steel and about 4 feet x4 feet square and were mounted atop heavy duty stands designed to hold 5K hot lights. The total package took two of us to raise it and move it. The unit had 4 1K halogen bulbs for modeling lights and two 3-1/2 foot long quartz flash tubes that were attached to two 680 series 2400ws power packs. Each weighed around 50 pounds each. This was the state of the art at the moment and was the improved version of the Ascor 800 series Sunlights. I never used the sunlight but was aware of them. They were made up of capacitor units weighing somewhere around 65 pounds each and delivered 800ws but required a power supply that weighed as much as 355 pounds. Up to 48 of the capacitors could be connected together and would deliver 40,000ws through a single flash tube. A full complement of capacitors weighed 3,000 pounds. Oh yes, these things were deadly and could kill if not treated with respect.

Here's a little article you might find fascinating.

https://cornicello.com/itfigures/ascoraaaa

Yeh, the good old days!

 

[charjohncarter]

I remember a guy in my high school had a (I think) Honeywell strobe. He walked around with a battery pack. But he was able to shoot at a basketball game. We could never figure out how he paid for that strobe. I wish I could see some of his photos again. They were very good, he used a Rolleiflex. Like you say they were big outfits even the Honeywell portable unit.

In 1970 I bought a Braun flash unit (very portable, but weak) and used it for years; then the rechargeable battery died. I continued to use it as a slave on AC power in my house. I still have it but have others to use now.

My friend at my suggestion use bought a GODOX tt685s for his FF Sony. We set it up and now he (who doesn't know the first thing about lighting) is a Pro.

 

[rybolt]

I remember a guy in my high school had a (I think) Honeywell strobe. He walked around with a battery pack. But he was able to shoot at a basketball game. We could never figure out how he paid for that strobe. I wish I could see some of his photos again. They were very good, he used a Rolleiflex. Like you say they were big outfits even the Honeywell portable unit.

In 1970 I bought a Braun flash unit (very portable, but weak) and used it for years; then the rechargeable battery died. I continued to use it as a slave on AC power in my house. I still have it but have others to use now.

My friend at my suggestion use bought a GODOX tt685s for his FF Sony. We set it up and now he (who doesn't know the first thing about lighting) is a Pro.

You young guys! I was mounting Ascor Sunlight Series heads and packs in the rafters of college basketball arenas back in the 70's. The only problem was that they had a long duration. Speedotron came out with a pack/head series that gave the same output but with a shorter duration and the PJ's and sports shooters swiyched over to them.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

In this film episode they show what was in use in sixties for USSR studios:
https://youtu.be/cjBu1U6NgO4?t=22m30s

 

[x-ray]

I remember my dad buying a new Pentax H3v and Honeywell Futuramatic strobonar. That was one sweet camera but the flash weighed several pounds and barely would reach across a small room.

It was around 1968 that I bought a Honeywell 660 that was great. it had a pretty good guide number, didn't weigh too much, rechargeable battery trays and best of all was automatic. I also bought 2 Honeywell 202 or 204 AC slave strobes for head shots. I had a Wein flash meter and thought the setup was pretty uptown.

Unfortunately I never used the Ascor Sun system but until digital came along had somewhere on the order of 40,000ws of Speedotron backline equipment. I had 6 - 2K Normans, 3 - 4K and 3 - 800's that were very unreliable and got rid of them. I still have around 15,000ws of Speedotron Black Line. They're really heavy but stand up under heavy use.

When I was doing a lot of catalog work I shot much of it on 8x10. I often used a 19" Red Dot Artar and would stop down to f64 or 90 for enough depth of field. On large sets, I'd have to turn the lights off in the studio and modeling lights off and open the lens and fire the strobes as many as 30 times to build up enough exposure. Each 48,000ws pack pulled 40 amps and the magnetic field generated around the metal conduit would make the steel in my building rattle. My studio was in a large steel building.

When I got into commercial work in 1972, that kind of power was rare. 2,400 ws was a huge amount of light and somehow we made do with it.

Even into the 80's I used flash bulbs. I lit some massive areas with #3's and fired them with 110v using a relay box so as not to kill myself. The amount of light from #3's was really hard to achieve any other way. There were times I'd use a couple dozen in one shot. The downside is you have to change the bulbs every time you make a shot, it's impossible to meter so it's by calculation and trial and error and it's a huge amount of work to string outlets and cables to couple interior lamps together. Also the cost is high.

I still have a case of bulbs and tell myself I'll use them one day.

Old guys that have used the big bulbs, ever had a bulb go off when you're putting it in the flashgun? Even a 25 or 5 will fry the fingerprints off your fingers. That's why we old-timers used a handkerchief or better the cardboard sleeve to hold the bulb when you put in the socket. Sometimes they would static fire, OUCH!!!

 

[x-ray]

An interesting little side note, I have a Ascor fresnel spot from the 80's that drops the breaker when I turn on my pack. I decided to get it fixed and contacted Speedotron today and they will still work on it.

In all the yeas of using Speedotron I only had one repair. I was on location shooting in the middle of a highway that the police graciously shut down for me. I was shooting a truck seat on the yellow line with a long lens and the mountains compressed up close. It was mid day and the sun was fun and harsh so I had to do some fill light. I had a large industrial generator that you pull behind a truck and was using a 4,800ws Speedotron and single 4,800 ws head in a 6ft soft box. The generator malfunctioned after a few shots and the regulator failed feeding 220v to my 110v pack. It popped and blew out a piece of ceramic insulation from the head. I sent my 2 assistants to quickly get some sheets of foam core and aluminum foil and used that as reflectors. It worked perfectly.

I shipped the pack to Speedotron and they repaired it in one day and shipped it back via air. The repair was around $125 and involved replacing a transformer and new piece of ceramic in the head. Great service!!!

 

[charjohncarter]

I still would like to have a lifetime supply of AG-1 bulbs to use with my Leica IIIf. Those slides were beautiful.

 

[Steve M.]

It's like the first time I saw someone use one of the first cell phones on the street. This suit was walking back and forth on the sidewalk in San Diego talking on a phone that had a cord connected to a largish pack on his shoulder, which I assume was the battery. I thought, wow, why would anyone want to do that? Now, I spend more time avoiding calls on the thing than answering them.

 

[Rob-F]

I had a Honeywell potato masher flash and a Braun Hobby flash. No idea what even happened to them. Now I have a different potato masher and a Nikon SB-something or other: SB-24? The latter died a while ago. I should open it up to see what I can do with it (I have an electronics background, a little rusty by now). Capacitor, likely. It would be fun to build up a really big electronic flash. I don't know what I would do with it. Light up the dark side of a building for an architectural shot. I used to work for EG&G Inc., founded by Dr. Harold Edgerton, who invented the electronic flash. You remember his picture of milk splashing into a dish, right? I worked in the Nevada office. But the biggest flash we put together wasn't electronic. It used over 100 flash bulbs! It was for scientific photography. I was the guy who had to change the bulbs.

 

[x-ray]

Bob In the mid 70's I worked for the DOE at Oak Ridge National Lab and one other facility. I did ultra high speed motion picture work and used FF33 and # 3 bulbs to lite the subject. Sometimes I only needed a split second of light and other times a second. I shot a lot of film at 44,000 frames per second. The shutter speed was 1/100,000 of a second and 400 ft of 4x went through the camera in 1/10 of a second. Timing was critical especially when you only had one chance to get the shot.

The FF33 was a good bulb with a 1.75 second peak. I still have one somewhere.

Edgertons work was amazing for the time. Wasn't he at MIT?

 

[Rob-F]

Edgertons work was amazing for the time. Wasn't he at MIT?

I think so. As I recall our home office might have been in Boston.

The fastest camera we had was a Bell & Howell Fastax, which used a vacuum cleaner motor to spin a drum. The film (just 5 or 6 feet) was wrapped inside the drum. There was a prism spinning the opposite direction from the drum to sort of "spray" the images onto the film. It was also a split-second event.

Otherwise we used high-speed 16mm Milliken cameras that ran maybe 400 frames per second, and 35mm and 16mm Mitchell cameras.

 

[BillBingham2]

Being a bit younger I remember my father lugging around his Crown Graphic and a battery pack for this huge flash head for many years. He was so happy when he switched jobs and went to a Vivitar 181 and a 35/1.4 Nikkor.

I remember seeing some shots of a family looking at a train going by at night lit by flash bulbs. I still have a lot of bulbs in boxes downstairs for when I have time to play. I loved using them in High School as I could paint the light (move the flash) with a long exposure.

A friend of mine got tossed across the room learning the fix an Apple Monitor, I can't image what one of those old flashes would do to you. While she was 5' nothing and weighed about 20lbs holding two buckets of water it's scary stuff.

B2 (;->

 

[Tim Murphy]

Some neat stories here!

Some neat stories here!

Dear x-ray,

I'm enjoying reading about this stuff even though I don't have the slightest idea what most of what you're saying means? It's just fun to read about things that exploded or could burn you! 😀

My Grandfather Murphy had a Honeywell Potato Masher flash that he used with his Nikon FTN to shoot beautiful slides of all the grandkids. He mostly used it in the house with an AC adapter and I can still remember that the lights inside the house used to dim when he set it off. I'll also never forget the smell of all the dead electrons after each flash. Seriously, that post flash smell is a great childhood memory for me.

Please keep the stories coming!

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg, PA 🙂

 

[charjohncarter]

https://ixquick-proxy.com/do/spg/sh...arger.jpg&sp=8d830c1fa9e7dc826c638eeaaa6e4c37

https://ixquick-proxy.com/do/spg/sh...13167.jpg&sp=c3f1faede29632a77dc23eb8d20ecb5a

Bill, here you go^^^

And search images O. Winston on google or any other engine.

 

[x-ray]

Being a bit younger I remember my father lugging around his Crown Graphic and a battery pack for this huge flash head for many years. He was so happy when he switched jobs and went to a Vivitar 181 and a 35/1.4 Nikkor.

I remember seeing some shots of a family looking at a train going by at night lit by flash bulbs. I still have a lot of bulbs in boxes downstairs for when I have time to play. I loved using them in High School as I could paint the light (move the flash) with a long exposure.

A friend of mine got tossed across the room learning the fix an Apple Monitor, I can't image what one of those old flashes would do to you. While she was 5' nothing and weighed about 20lbs holding two buckets of water it's scary stuff.

B2 (;->

It was O Winston Link that did all the train images and lit them with flash bulbs. I met him about 23 years ago and just happened to have a #11 bulb with me and a sharpie. I love his work and asked him to autograph my bulb. He did but thought it was really funny.

 

[x-ray]

Being a bit younger I remember my father lugging around his Crown Graphic and a battery pack for this huge flash head for many years. He was so happy when he switched jobs and went to a Vivitar 181 and a 35/1.4 Nikkor.

I remember seeing some shots of a family looking at a train going by at night lit by flash bulbs. I still have a lot of bulbs in boxes downstairs for when I have time to play. I loved using them in High School as I could paint the light (move the flash) with a long exposure.

A friend of mine got tossed across the room learning the fix an Apple Monitor, I can't image what one of those old flashes would do to you. While she was 5' nothing and weighed about 20lbs holding two buckets of water it's scary stuff.

B2 (;->

It was O Winston Link that did all the train images and lit them with flash bulbs. I met him about 23 years ago and just happened to have a #11 bulb with me and a sharpie. I love his work and asked him to autograph my bulb. He did but thought it was really funny.

 

[David Hughes]

I had a portable electronic flash in the early sixties. The flash tube unscrewed and was carried around in a tin tube with a screw top and a lot of padding. The power was two 90v batteries in series and they were heavy.

Regards, David

 

[BillBingham2]

Very cool stuff, #11, Walk With Pride X-Ray!

CJC, thank you!

I remember going to a talk at ICP that Dr. Edgerton gave in the mid '80s. He invented side scanning sonar, amazing man. He was very old at the time but you still see the spark in his eyes when he talk about his pictures and stuff he did. I wasn't smart enough to bring an electronic flash and a sharpie.

Can't wait for the weather to get better, gotta go see if the old Vivitars still cycle.....

B2 (;->

 

[Nokton48]

When I outfitted my home studio I went with old Broncolor. Several of the central fixtures are two 606 power packs, which allow me to put 6000WS through one head. These packs are 220V and are about as safe as you can get with this kind of thing. I can do 12000WS in one "pop" and it does make quite a "thump" when it fires. The Broncolor Hazylight completes the rig. I bought all of it for $600 from MPEX and hauled it away in my Minivan. It was previously owned by a British Fashion Photographer who used it to make 8x10 chromes (catalog work) in NYC.

In the 1970s I bought a Honeywell 700 Strobonar brand new and it never failed me for over ten years of photojournalistic photography. Now I use hot rodded Norman 200b's, New York Flash Clinic even made a Hasselblad ringlight for me that fits the 200b pack. Norman 200bs are 200WS.

Vivitar 283's were my go-to units fifteen years ago; right now I use them occasionally. Probably have ten or twelve of them around here now. Recently I have toyed with the idea of using them with the Plaubel Makina IIIs. Actually that is a very good combo for retro press photography.

Larry at Broncolor Service informed me that those 606s were originally valued at about $150,000.00 each. I probably paid about $100 each for the 606 heads and packs.

 

[rfaspen]

Large capacitance components scare me. I once shorted a moderatly big capacitor with a screwdriver (by accident). The spark, noise, and smoke scared me quite a bit, but noticing the melted metal on my screwdiver shank is when the fear set in.

Looking in my old (but very reliable) Norman power unit, I see a few rather intimidating capacitors. I see some kids are using large capacitors in their car sound systems these days....I noticed an advertisement for a 1 Farad capacitor at the audio store. Um....1 whole Farad of capacitance must easily be lethal!