Endlessly Power Your Flash Lights With A Flashlight
Sep 28, 2010
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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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
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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2 responses to “Endlessly Power Your Flash Lights With A Flashlight”
Another easy way to create the dummy batteries is to use the plastic converters listed here at Amazon:
http://amzn.to/10yExPZ
save yourself from yourself and order the Youngnuo 560-III that also includes wireless transmitter/receiver… its the equivalent of an SB910 or the 580EX from Canon!!! at $83 dollars in amazon.