DIY Disposable Camera Flash Slave
I have always wanted an external flash slave. That is an external flash that detects an on camera flash and will also be triggered. An external slave gives a photographer a lot of options for lighting. It will allow for nice smooth cross lighting, and will eliminate a lot of harsh shadows. There are several ways of triggering an external flash. The first way of triggering the flash is to use a camera sync cable. This will send a signal to the flash, when the camera shutter is depressed. The next way is to use radio frequencies, to trigger the external flash, and the final way is to use a light detector.
I have been playing around lately with an old disposable camera that I found lying around in my room. It was an ancient Kodak camera, but it had a flash, so I tore the thing apart. I noted how flimsy the case for the disposable camera was, and how hard it was to open it up. This would later spark my interest in finding a more suitable disposable camera for my project (Kodak Max). A film camera was necessary to use because they are so cheap. There was no reason to use a disposable digital camera because they cost a lot more.
Anyway, I decided I wanted to make an external slave. I thought about buying a slave peanut trigger. This is a little device that does exactly what I wanted to build. I would merely connect the flash switch to the peanut. I could not find one, so I decided to build my own.
I pulled out my old 200 in 1 electronics kit from when I was a kid. I found a Cadmium sulfide photovoltaic cell, and some NPN transistors, and a relay. I charged up my flash, and connected it across the relay, and gave 9 VDC to the relay coil, and it triggered the flash. I then measured the resistance across the photo cell, and found that in ambient room light, it was like 65K. With a flashlight on it, it went to like 5K. That was perfect, so I connected it to the base of an NPN transistor, connected the emitter to ground, and the collector went to one pin of my relay. The other coil pin of the relay I connected to +9v, through a 250 ohm resistor. When I turned on the flashlight, the flash did indeed work. (Now, I want to take a second to explain why I am using a relay in this project. A SCR, silicon controlled rectifier, would be much better, but I don’t have one, and Radio Shack does not have one either. I used parts for this camera that I had lying around, or could easily get.)
After getting that to work, I thought that I wanted a circuit that would recharge itself. The old flash that I had made you hold the flash charge button for a minimum of 16 seconds, and that is on a brand new AA battery. I found another small 5 VDC relay from Radio Shack, and connected it to the charge switch, and found that I could make the relay charge the camera. I found some problems with it though. How was I going to detect when the camera flash was charged, and how was I going to keep the relay turned on long enough? I decided that this project was in desperate need of a microcontroller.
I will get to the microcontroller later, but for now, I decided to test my flash system with my camera flash. It was a miserable failure. The relay takes a finite amount of time to switch, and the flash on my camera is only on for 10-20 microseconds. That is not near enough time to flip the relay. I needed a circuit that would turn the relay on for at least 100 microseconds or more. This is when the microcontroller became a necessity. Note once again that an SCR does not have this problem of delay, and would be ideal, but I like the relay. I love the click that it makes, and I was determined at this point to use it.
I pulled out my new PICkit1 and started playing with the PIC12F675 (U2 in schematic). I went over an algorithm in my head. I want this micro to do several things. First, I want an LED (D3) to light saying that the camera is charged, and turned on and ready to fire. Second, I wanted it to turn on the main 9VDC (RLY2) flash relay for around ½ of a second, and third, I wanted to control my small 5VDC reed relay (RLY1) to recharge the camera, and I wanted the LED (D3) to stay turned off for 16 seconds, so that the camera flash could not be fired while the flash was being charged. I found that a Kodak Max has an automatic rechargeable flash, and that all that was needed to charge it was to press the button once. It would then totally recharge itself. This eliminated the need for a circuit that would detect the charged voltage of the capacitor, which is around 300 V, and it would not have been easy to build a circuit like this.
The Kodak Max also has an advantage in that it has a nice sturdy case that is easy to take apart. It makes a perfect project case.
You can see the completed camera above
Here you can see the front two wires that go to the camera recharge, and the two side metal pieces are the flash switch. The recharge wires (Flash Recharge 1 and 2) go to my 5V reed relay (RLY1), and the two flash switch wires (Flash1 and Flash2) go to my 9V trigger relay (RLY2).
I soldered all of my components together on a small breadboard, which you can see in the above picture. I did not have a CDS photocell, so I replaced it with an IR phototransistor. My GP3 port on my microcontroller was my input from the phototransistor, which I set to high +5V through a 10K resistor (R2). I then connected my IR phototransistor (Q3) to +9V, through a 10K resistor (R4), and a 10K potentiometer (R3). I connected the emitter to the base of a NPN transistor (Q2).
GP0 was connected through a 100 ohm resistor (R1) to my reed relay (RLY1). I have this pin set to activate on a Low output. The other pin of my reed relay (RLY1) is connected to +5V. The reed relay then goes to connect Flash Recharge1 and 2. GP4 is connected to an LED (D3) which is also activated on a low output. This is my “Ready†LED, which tells when the Flash is ready to fire again. GP5 is connected through a 1K resistor (R6) to the base of another NPN transistor (Q1). The emitter of Q1 is connected to ground, and the collector is connected to one pin of RLY2. The other coil pin of RLY2 is connected to +9v through a 250 Ohm resistor (R7).
I use a 7805 voltage regulator (U1) to supply the +5V needed to power the PIC12F675 (U2) chip.
You can download the code for the PIC12F75 here (Just rename to flashtrigger.asm).
Here are some photos of the camera working. You can see me taking a picture of the flash, and actually using the camera to illuminate my photographic subject. (Note, the camera should not be in the frame, I just have it in the frame so that everyone can see it working).
One final note about my camera, is that I have a Canon 10D, which has a pre-flash that fires so that the camera can calculate how long the real flash should be on. This pre-flash tripped the trigger on my flash which caused it to fire to early. I hardwired a 100 ms delay so that the disposable camera would flash at the right time, and could be seen on my digital camera. In most cases this would not be needed, and you will need to edit the timing on the PIC chip to get it to work with your own camera. I should have made it where the camera will have to flash twice to flip the switch, so I don’t know for sure if the relay will work in a standard camera without a pre-flash. It may take so long to trip the relay (RLY2) that the digital camera exposure will be over before the disposable flash goes off. An SCR would take care of this, and would eliminate any time spent to flip the relay. Just replace the RLY2 with an SCR that is capable of handling 400V, and edit the code to change any delays. Also this code had a switch debounce subroutine, which I edited to make a 10ms delay. (I took the switch debounce program from the pickit1 tutorial and edited it to make my program). Be extremely careful with the capacitor on this flash. It has 300 V when fully charged. Before handling, discharge the camera, and remove the AA battery. Then you can short out the cap with a screwdriver, or a 1K resistor. I am not responsible for any injuries obtained from working on this camera.
One more use for this camera is that it could easily be changed to be used as a high speed flash. A microphone could be used instead of an IR phototransistor, and you could fire the flash with a balloon pop. You could then use a digital camera, and actually make it take a picture with the sound also.
45 Responses to “DIY Disposable Camera Flash Slave”
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It took me about a week of working on and off to come up with, and test many ideas… but as far as assembly, it could be done in a day or so. Congrats for what?
I have one too! It uses just an SCR and a photocell. I got the circuit from an old
out of print electronics book.
http://www.rebeccahinden.com/hacks.html
Thanks Alan. I try to give good images. I am really interested in photography, and I try to edit some images in photoshop.
Thanks, and sure you can link to this project
[...] For even more ambitious lighting set-ups at minimal cost, we bet you never thought of adapting discarded disposable film cameras, to turn them into slave flashguns? We certainly hadn’t. All it requires is several weeks work, a PhD in electronics, and a shop full of electronic components. [...]
[...] >> DIY Disposable Camera Flash Slave [...]
Pretty cool… Would have never thought it could be done… but then again that’s why i don’t make the big bucks… I don’t think of these things.
Jim
Don Lapre James
webmaster@donlapresite.com
http://www.donlapresite.com
Good Work !
And great idea of Microphone in the end. You rock !
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[...] Re: zelfbouw flitser Misschien kan je hier iets mee…. DIY Live » DIY Archive » DIY Disposable Camera Flash Slave [...]
Why not just use a tablelamp?
[...] Here is a design for a circuit that will take pictures of lightning. It is basically a light sensor that is amplified and passed through a high pass filter to record fast changes in light, and then attached to a relay that trips the camera. This seems very similar to my design of the external disposable camera flash. My design uses a microcontroller to do all of the hard work for you. I much prefer to use programming anytime I can to save work on using hardware. In a nutshell, the photo darlington converts light pulses into electrical pulses, the first LM324 section amplifies the electrical pulses, the second LM324 section is a high pass filter that only passes quick changes (lightning). The third LM324 stage is a comparator that allows only large pulses to pass through, and the 4047 one-shot stretches out the length of the pulses so that they are long enough to drive the relay and trigger the camera. The 2N3904 drives the reed relay, which in turn triggers the camera’s electronic shutter switch. The VN10KM prevents the circuit from triggering the camera when it is first turned on. The LM324 GND Ref circuit divides the 9V power into two for a 4.5V ground reference. The other op-amp circuits use this reference value. [...]
[...] I have been looking at mods and hacks for a while now, and I always save them when I see something cool. I have done several DIY projects using a disposable camera, and so they have always peaked my interest. I decided to take all of the mods that I have seen over the last few years and make a top ten list of what I think are the coolest mods for a disposable camera. These hacks are in no particular order. 10. Macro photography with Disposable Camera This is something I did a while back while working on a project of mine. I actually stumbled upon it. It is nothing special, and the pictures are not even that great, but the point was to me at least was that it worked, and it was cool. You just take the lens off of a disposable camera and place it in front of your lens, and then move close to an object until it is in focus and take a picture. 9. Grafitti Light This is a project that I believe I found from Makezine a while back, and I just saved it. It inspired my flash slave. This project makes an automatic timer circuit that charges the flash, and then flashes it repetitively. This guy made a stencil that says a message, “no war” in this case, and places the flash behind the stencil shining through the lens. I am convinced that I can use this concept to make a slide projector, and have worked on it, but I need a bright light source and finally gave up. 8. RFID Zapper This project was big a few years back, but I never paid much attention to it. I don’t have any reason to zap RFID tags, and I actually could not tell even if I did zap one. This project is cool though, and basically sends out a large electromagnetic wave to zap them. Don’t get your ipod too close. 7. Disposable Camera Flash Slave This project is one of my own creations. I really like photography, and know the values of an external flash slave. It can allow the photographer to do a lot of neat things with the lighting. To buy one is expensive, so I decided to make my own. It has a photocell detecting light, and has a microcontroller that charges the flash for you, and then gets everything ready. When the camera sees an external flash, it fires the disposable camera adding light during the exposure. You can even take a picture of the flash going off. [...]
You wrote:
“I should have made it where the camera will have to flash twice to flip the switch, so I don’t know for sure if the relay will work in a standard camera without a pre-flash. It may take so long to trip the relay (RLY2) that the digital camera exposure will be over before the disposable flash goes off.”
If you can program control of a hardware-based time-delay, to the millisecond, and can thus trigger the flash to occur/appear between the camera’s flash’s (exposure) and the last instant in which the entire field of the medium is simultaneously being exposed – or even slightly beyond that, depending on the class of camera in use -, then you could open a wide, wide range of photographic possibilities based on the temporal relationship between the two principle contributors to the exposure…
I agree that the camera is the perfect project case. It is also the perfect thing to put on a tripod or other stand.
You also wrote:
“the flash behind the stencil shining through the lens. I am convinced that I can use this concept to make a slide projector, and have worked on it, but I need a bright light source and finally gave up.”
What about a cascade of capacitors instead of the (likely) single, small-ish-capacity found in the disposable? You could then arrange to dump the smaller – even much smaller than the original – capacitor through the flash tube, then refill that cap from the ‘cache’ in the larger capacitor, cyclically during use. This would be intended to deliver a high-availability, non-photographic-strength, cool-running light. Adjust the timing, with particular regard to the persistence of vision, and the effective ‘frame rate’, of the human eye-brain, and shoot for a projector.
i tried it my self and i have let you know that it works amazing
wow….thanks again
JUST FOR GOOD ADVISE
IT ALLWAYS GOOD TO USE A 1600 SPEED FILM OR ANY HIGH SPEED FILM WHEN YOU ARE USEING A DISPOSABLE CAMERA
The link in duikforum.nl for another solution, funnily brings you to a new link: pointing at this here project.
The link in duikforum.nl for another solution, funnily brings you to a new link: pointing at this here project.
Thanks for sharing
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting! Look for some my links:
Great Share
Thanks, very interesting DIY.
I have kept 5 one-time-use camera flashes and I’ll try to do a ring slave flash!
Dear Sir,
I am an amateur. I wish to convert or bulid a flash for copying slides on a slow duplicating film. Is it possibel to move the flash tube forward so that I get a parallel beam flash? Principally, this will collect the light in to a narrow beam with magnified intensity. What I nead is spot of just above 30 mm X 40mm. Note that ASA for dup film can be as low as ASA3 or ASA1. Even a Metz 202 flash without modification is just adequate.
[...] More can be seen at my Facebook Album. We expect to do more including using a strobe light instead of a flash. I also plan on making my own flash. [...]
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[...] link to an old article on how to hack a disposable camera into an automatic flash slave unit. gotta try this. (via [...]
[...] macchine usa e getta hanno solitamente un piccolo flash, al loro interno. DIYLive ci mostra come riutilizzare questi piccoli flash, associandogli un piccolo circuito elettronico che provvede a far scattare il flash non appena [...]
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Great Article! I love it when people use old electronics for creative new ideas. I wonder if you could make a kit out of this? Like a build your own Flash slave? Just an idea! Thanks for sharing!
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[...] link to an old article on how to hack a disposable camera into an automatic flash slave unit. gotta try this. (via [...]
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Use a disposable camera as a remote slave
You’e got to be kidding !!
How about something between kindergarden projects (writing on instant photos) and engineering projects (making yor own flash slave from an instant camera?)
Come on people , most of us fall somewhere in between these two extremes!!!
Like a build your own Flash
Thank you for this post, really interesting. Feel free to comment on my blog, I was solving similar problem.
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