Flash bulbs! But how???

[big_ben_blue]

Has someone ever tried to use old fashioned flash bulbs with the a digital (or ANY) camera?

I have a specific personal project in mind, which includes lighting very large and dark spaces. My puny Monoblocks won't do, and neither will one or two power packs; I need RAW pure power.
I was thinking of something along the line of Winston Link's work (the guy, who shot all the steam engines back in the 50's). He used dozens of simultaneous fired flash bulbs for his shots. I can't find any information aside from the fact, that he used a homemade red "black box" to contol power/channels/timing.
How would I have to rig up multiple bulbs to have em firing at the same time without causing a short over larger distances (and nuking my camera)?

Chris

[Wilm]

Chris,
I am trying to answer. If I will loose some words as I know you speak German, please apologize that some expressions will be not english.

Questions :


1st: How big is the location ? huge, big, extraordinaire ?
2nd: White walls, black walls, even no walls ?
3rd: how much time do you have ?

We have done a lot of investigations for mine-shootings with the old magnesia-bulbs. 10grams of magnesia, 0.5grams of Baryte to create a convenient color-temperature. These tiny "flashes will be fired". It's the same technology as in the beginnings of photography, very much light, more smoke than expected, but the results are great and cheap.

We've done a shooting in an old mine early last year and that was fun. Nobody said "action"! He said "fire". These were my first photos I could hear the sound of light :rockon:

Go ahead, what do you need ?

:cheers:
Wilm

BTW: I'm not a rich pro, I'm an amateur. So I keep these things cheap .....

[Tom V]

I have used flash bulbs. It was several years ago (1980ish). The studio I worked in used them to simulate natural light in "room scene" photography - for Sear's, JCPenney, Alden, Speigel, etc. catalogs. Our task was to make a room set look naturally lit, so we would put flash bulbs in real table lamps. The bulbs were regular 100watt size, with a household screw-in base, either blue or clear, and filled with wire filaments. Turn the lamp on (just plug it in, off set) and POW! I don't recall them as being brighter than ordinary flash, and I doubt any one bulb would be brighter than even the weakest monoblock.

They had a long flash duration, which easily could be partially missed by X sync. I think that is what Y sync was designed for on older shutters. Usually, we would use a handcount of 5 seconds or so, to give the assistant time to plug the extension cords in.

After an exposure, we would usually process the sheet of film, to see how things looked. If they needed more light, - you couldn't turn them up - we would open the lens more, or screen the other "main" lights ( usually several 1000w Mole Richardsons fresnel lensed, tungsten lights.)

We used Packard shutters, which were entirely mechanical, with an entirely human timing system for timed exposure, (squeeze the bulb - stop squeezing the bulb), or for "instant" shutter closing, involved putting a peg in a hole. Packard shutters could be built by 10 year olds, and as reliable and simple as a fork and a spoon.

Link used hundreds of bulbs, in shiny reflectors, probably wide open on his view camera, and probably blew more exposures than he would ever let on.

When the studio closed, I helped myself to a box of flash bulbs. I would use them on April Fools Day, and put them in unsuspecting coworkers' desk lamps, or around the house. In a few years, they were gone.

I have seen them on ebay, but it could get quite expensive to illuminate any large room. Beside having the bulb, you need a base or lamp holder to put the bulb in.

I would be inclined to use "multiple pops" to increase your light output. If the large space is dark enough, leave the shutter open long enough to flash your monoblocks 2x or 4x or 8x times. By firing your strobe 4 times, it is like having 4 strobes firing at once. Or, with the camera securly mounted, do a quadruple exposure, building light quantity with each exposure.

Or, I would be inclined to simply use hot lights - incandescent bulbs, and shoot a 20 second exposure or whatever.

If you are capturing movement, I would like to know what kind of important movement happens in a large dark space????

[big_ben_blue]

Hi Wilm,

thanks for the reply.

As for the location size, think cathedrals, VERY large halls, and such. I'm trying to get at least F/32 at ISO100.

The wall colour could be anything from white to very dark and everything in-between.

Magnesium powder came to my mind as well; but I might run into fire hazard issues here (plus the smoke might set off the fire alarms :eek: ).

Colour temperature isn't much of an issue either, as I will probably end up shooting in B/W (I might even get that old 5x7 beast out for that).

Time is not an issue either; I got all the time in the world for my project.

Do you have any idea how to rig the wires up (the flashes would have to be fired from multiple locations at the same time).

And you spoke my mind when mentioning "So I keep these things cheap". Big, new flash bulbs are prohibitely expensive; I'm operating on a shoe string budget (getting bulbs via ebay crossed my mind as one option).

Cheers,
Chris

[big_ben_blue]

Tom, thanks for your points.

My project is still in its early planning stage and is miles from taking off. It's a mix between architectural and portrait photography so to speak (for more info you have to wait until its started to keep the suspense :D).

Yeah, I know the good ol' Packard's. Don't have one yet, but will one day (maybe).

Multipopping flash heads isn't an option, as I'm talking stopping motion in a cathedral sized lit space. Using a few Mole's came to mind too, but only as a way to "freeze" the subject; to light the hall in behind, I need some more radical power.
BTW, a lot of flash bulbs give MUCH more light than any monoblock would; so I' surprised about your observations.
Some of Link's books show a few of his setups, but unfortunatelly don't go into any detail.

Cheers,
Chris

[Wichita Wayne]

Sports arenas use big monolights mounted in the cealing so that they pop straight down. They are not distracting to the subjects and provide wide coverage over the entire arena. Our local newspaper installed them and you can check out or use you own radio on the camera to fire the things.

[Johnelle]

Have you tried painting the subject with multiple shots from your strongest handheld flashgun? And I mean very strong! The trick is to open the shutter then move around in a very controlled manner firing the flash and literally painting your subject, this will need a great deal of thought and planning with not only multiple flashes to light the whole area but many flashes on the same spot to achieve the desired exposure. This technique is best used in areas where the overall light levels are low because trying to mix natural and flashlight is not easy to plan. Digital does allow you to view your final shots to see if you have achieved an acceptable shot before leaving the scene unlike us poor beasts who had to hope everything was ok when shooting film. Over in the UK the bulbs used in the 60's and 70's were P60's and we used to fire up to 8 banks of 12 bulbs per bank over seemingly endless lengths of cable, and later sometimes on 10 x 8 tyranny film which heaped the pressure on. Regretably once electronic flash came along bulbs were quickly discontinued but electronic never achieved the same results so we had to learn to paint. If planned out well one can achieve very dramatic lighting and of course your body shape is lost in the process. Best of luck.

[xrdbear]

Back at the end of the sixties I was leaving school and wanted some pictures to remember the building by. It *was* built in 1552 after all. The halls were a little large for the flash on my Kodak Brownie 44A so I made a box to take 5 extra large flash bulbs and added a few hundred extra microfarad of capacitor to fire them ( although I discovered that if they are close enough together the heat radiation from a couple will set the others off anyway). Next I found an unsuspecting third former to hold the box a good distance from me and off we went to shoot the school on 4x4 slides. The photographs were quite reasonable, the 44A's contacts survived and the third former was hardly charred at all.

Brian

[big_ben_blue]

How did you wire the bulbs and capacitors up? This sound exactly what I am after.

Johnelle was suggesting using multiple flash to light paint around the space (large cathedral). That doesn't work in my case however, as my project is more of an environmental portrait (person in context of a LARGE SPACE), and I can't expect my subject to hold perfectly still for a minute or two while I light the surrounding space. Right now, I'm starting to lean towards using a 5x7 camera with B/W rather than a digital, for quality reasons with long exposures (F/32 or 45 :rolleyes: ). I don't want to use my powerpacks, as they would most likely blow the fuses at the cathedrals (usually their electrical systems are ancient :rolleyes: )

Cheers,
Chris

[xrdbear]

How did you wire the bulbs and capacitors up? This sound exactly what I am after.

You appreciate this was rather a long way back but, as I recall, the flash used an unusual 15V battery. The battery could fire a single small flashbulb but could not manage the current peak to fire a load of the big bulbs connected in parallel. I wired a large, several hundred microfarad capacitor in parallel with the battery to manage the peak current. This is wholly unsuitable for a modern camera though, as the x contacts would never carry the current. Best thing would be to use a thyristor to handle the discharge of the capacitor into the flashbulbs and just trigger the thyristor using the x-contacts. Using a sensitive gate thyristor would limit the trigger current to a few milliamps. I think if you were thinking of using a *lot* of flashbulbs you might need to talk to a pyrotechnic engineer rather than an electronic engineer. Sorry but I can't really provide a circuit as I'm out of touch with components these days.

Brian

[Johnelle]

. . sounds like a problem to me because a 5x4 in BxW or colour will require a long exposure at f32/45 with the inherent movement of your sitter.
I presume we are talking about a day time shot ie ambient light plus fill-light and I can only suggest you use fast film say HP5 or such rated at 250 ISO and pull the dev to suit to keep the range to a minimum and print - dodge and burn to achieve an acceptable result . more than that you will need a very large electronic flash kit to achieve the result I think you are looking for.
dont forget as long as your sitter stays roughly in position slight movement will not show as long as his/her ambient lighting levels are lower than the surrounding or background area and you have light the sitter with flash.

is it not possible to do a trial run to see what works then adjust in a later shot to achieve the best ( compromise ) result