Endlessly Power Your Flash Lights With A Flashlight
Photographer Matt Kenney came up with quite a clever way to provide external power to his battery operated strobe (Canon 430EXII).
Instead of building a specialized case with a dedicated battery, or drilling a power socket into the flash, Matt went for the shelf product and used one of them $6, 6V flash lights (about a dollar a volt). I always prefer off the shelf products to making something new, always. Matt then went ahead and equipped it with a 6V rechargeable battery, and a charging jack.
On the strobe side, Matt used wooden batteries to allow the power to flow. IT get a recycle time of 1.2 seconds for full pop (holdya'rhorses SB900 users, it will heat up soon enough).
Matt was kind enough to allow me to share his picture tutorial on DIYP
Creating the battery Pack
You'll need: A flash light, a rechargeable 6V battery, a solder, some wires and an audio jack.
Creating the Wooden Batteries
You'll need: a drill, 1/8"bit, and hand saw (or a dremel) and a Philips head screw, 1/4" diameter X 1-7/8" wooden dowel.
A heads up on the head of the screw .... The Negative Dummy is not so important, and could be a nice fat end .... BUT ... the positive terminal might need to be as narrow as the tip of a AA battery. Some flash's positive end is designed to be a safety, and will not allow contact from a battery placed in backwards, such as my Canon's ... If you are not getting power from your DIY battery pack, this would be the first place I would check ...
The Added Bonus
To make things really sweet... The flash light can be used for focusing light at low lights scenarios. This is exactly what Matt did for this photograph
Get the DIYP greatness via RSS, newsletter and Twitter
Connect with the community: Facebook Page, Discussions
Share Ideas, Setups, Images and Projects on DIYP's Flickr, visit Readers Photos
Comments
battery pack
I don't get it. Why not just use the AA rechargeable batteries inside the flash?
Usually for a faster recycle
Usually for a faster recycle time, longer shooting time due to the larger battery and also the ability to use the torch as a focusing light is an added bonus too
Might try this in the studio
Thanks for this very creative idea.
@RANDY SCOTT
albeit a valid question, you need to think outside the box (battery)...think of the AA's as small buckets of power whereas you have the HUGE 6V bucket that has a large (almost lake sized compared to the AA's) quantity of power. you can keep 'dipping' into the resevoir and the recycle time will be faster due to the higher voltage as well...great idea btw to use this as a focusing light in low light situations!
Would it be possible to use
Would it be possible to use eg. Canon's own external connection for battery pack, or is there some other "logic" needed for that?
Looks a really good idea
I'm looking at getting a flash for Christmas but looking at the new Nissin Di 866 as I can't afford the ridiculously priced Canon offerings for my EOS. I was looking at their battery packs on Amazon and they go for about the same as the flash gun at around £200 - so I think I'll be experimenting along these lines in the new year! Thanks for the heads-up.
I love this DIY stuff...
Excellent idea and nice clear
Excellent idea and nice clear instructions.
Thanks
External battery-pack for a flash from MadKat.
Be carefull not to push your flash to hard or too far depending on the model you are using. If you have something like a METZ 45CL4 or higher, you can go as far as the Spaceshuttle. Some like it hot. But if your smaller flash suddenly stops working, there is no way back.
If you still have a 500 ELM from Hasselblad you can use the same system as external battery with a special 5 pins DIN (Radio Shack etc) connector on the other side. Gives years of power and pleasure.
Cedric Agie
Brussels
Cano 430 ex ii - yes, it works
I recently decided to create one of these for my canon 430 ex ii after finding it in a google search. I can confirm that it works. Though I did not use a flash light, only a $4 everready 6v from Lowes. The reason I decided to make one is because how quickly the 430 can eat batteries. I did some test shots and it keeps the 3-4 second recylce time on manual power 1/1 for well more shots than any batteries I have used before. I did have to modify my flash a bit for the cord, but not enough that anyone could tell at a glance. I also dod not go as far as making a new door, this way I can use my normal batteries easily without changing anything.
A great tutorial and I thank you for posting it!
Post new comment