Types of Flashes

Flashbulbs

Kodak Brownie Hawkeye with "Kodalite Flasholder" and Sylvania P25 blue-dot daylight-type flashbulb

The earliest flashes had of a quantity of flash powder consisting of a mechanical mixture of magnesium powder and potassium chlorate that was ignited by hand. Later, magnesium filaments were contained in flash bulbs filled with oxygen gas, and electrically ignited by a contact in the camera shutter; such a bulb could only be used once, and was too hot to handle immediately after use, but the confinement of what would otherwise have amounted to a small explosion was an important advance. An innovation was coating flashbulbs with a blue plastic coating to match the spectral quality to daylight balanced colour film and to make it look more moderate, as well as providing shielding for the bulb in the unlikely event of it shattering during the flash. Later bulbs substituted zirconium for the magnesium, which produced a brighter flash and tended to temporarily blind people. Flashbulbs took longer to reach full brightness and burned for longer than electronic flashes. Slower shutter speeds (typically from 1/10 to 1/50 of a second) were used on cameras to ensure proper synchronization. A widely used flashbulb through the 1960s was the number 25. This is the large (approximately 1 inch (25 mm) in diameter) flashbulb often shown used by newspapermen in period movies, usually attached to a press camera or a twin-lens reflex camera.

Flashcubes, Magicubes and Flipflash

Flashcube fitted to a Kodak Instamatic camera, showing both unused (left) and used (right) bulbs.

Undersides of Flashcube (left) and Magicube (right) cartridges.

"Flip flash" type cartridge

In the late 1960s, Kodak improved their Instamatic camera line by replacing the individual flashbulb technology (used on early Instamatics) with the Flashcube. Flashcubes consisted of four electrically fired flashbulbs with an integral reflector in a cube-shaped arrangement that allowed taking four images in a row. A mechanism in the camera automatically rotated the flashcube 90 degrees to a fresh bulb upon advancing the film to the next exposure. The later Magicube (or X-Cube) retained the four-bulb format, and was superficially similar to the original Flashcube. However, the Magicube did not require electrical power- each bulb was set off by a plastic pin in the cube mount that released a cocked spring wire within the cube. This wire, in turn, struck a primer tube, at the base of the bulb, which contained a fulminate. The fulminate ignited shredded Zirconium foil in the flash and, thus, a battery was not required. Magicubes could also be fired by inserting a thin object, such as a key or paper clip, into one of the slots in the bottom of the cube. Flashcubes and Magicubes are superficially similar but not interchangeable. Cameras requiring flashcubes have a round socket and a round hole for the flashcube's pin, while those requiring Magicubes have a round shape with protruding studs and a square socket hole for the Magicube's square pin. The Magicube socket can also be seen as an X, which accounts for its alternate name, X-Cube. Another common flashbulb-based device was the Flipflash which included ten or so bulbs in a single unit. The name derived from the fact that once half the flashes had been used up, the unit had to be flipped and re-inserted to use the remainder.

Modern flash technology

Today^[update]'s flash units are often electronic flashtubes. An electronic flash contains a tube filled with xenon gas, where electricity of high voltage is discharged to generate an electrical arc that emits a short flash of light. (A typical duration of the light impulse is 1/1000 second.) As of 2003, the majority of cameras targeted for consumer use have an electronic flash unit built in.

Two professional flashes.

Another type of flash unit are microflashes, which are high-voltage flash units discharging a flash of light with an exceptionally quick, sub-microsecond duration. These are commonly used by scientists or engineers for examining extremely fast moving objects or reactions, famous for producing images of bullets tearing through objects like lightbulbs or balloons. Studio flashes usually contain a modeling light, an incandescent lightbulb close to the flash tube. The continuous illumination of a modeling light helps in visualizing the effect of the flash. The strength of a flash device is often indicated in terms of a guide number, despite the fact that the published guide numbers of different units can not necessarily be directly compared. The strength of larger studio flash units, such as monolights are indicated in watt-seconds.

Flash intensity

Unlike flashbulbs, the intensity of an electronic flash can be adjusted on some units. Small flash units typically vary the length of time of the discharge, larger (studio) units typically charge the capacitor less. The disadvantage of charging the capacitor less is that the color temperature may change, necessitating corrections. With advances in semiconductor technology, there are some monolight (studio) units which can vary the time of the discharge. The flash duration is typically described with two numbers: t.5 is the length of time for which the flash impulse is above 0.5 (50%) of the peak intensity, while t.1 is the length of time for which the impulse is above 0.1 (10%) of the peak (t.3 of course, would be above 30%). For instance, t.5 can be 1/1200 sec whereas t.1 can be 1/450 sec for the same flash at the same intensity. For a small flash controlling intensity by time, the t.5 and t.1 numbers decrease as the intensity decreases. On flash units controlling intensity by capacitor charge, the t.5 and t.1 numbers increase as the intensity decreases (i.e. takes longer for the capacitor to discharge to that point). These times become important if a person wants to freeze action with the flash (as in sports). Flash intensity is typically measured in stops or in fractions (1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 etc.). Some monolights display an "EU Number", so that a photographer can know the difference in brightness between different flash units with different watt-second ratings. EU10.0 is defined as 6400 Watt-seconds, and EU9.0 is one stop lower, i.e. 3200 watt-seconds.

Flash LED illumination

Although they are not yet at the power levels to replace xenon flash devices in still cameras, high-current flash LEDs have recently been used as flash sources in camera phones. The major advantages of LEDs over xenon include low voltage operation, higher efficiency and extreme miniaturization.

Focal-plane-shutter synchronization

Electronic flash units have compatibility issues with focal-plane shutters. Focal-plane shutters expose using two curtains that cross the sensor. The first one opens and the second curtain follows it after a delay equal to the nominal shutter speed. A typical modern focal-plane shutter takes about 1/200s to cross the sensor, so at exposure times shorter than this only part of the sensor is uncovered at any one time. Electronic flash can have durations as short as 50 µs, so at such short exposure times only part of the sensor is exposed. This limits the shutter speed to about 1/200s when using flash. In the past, slow-burning single-use flash bulbs allowed the use of focal-plane shutters at maximum speed because they produced continuous light for the time taken for the exposing slit to cross the film gate. If these are found they cannot be used on modern cameras because the bulb must be fired *before* the first shutter curtain begins to move (M-sync); the X-sync used for electronic flash normally fires only when the first shutter curtain reaches the end of its travel. High-end flash units address this problem by offering a mode, typically called FP sync or HSS (High Speed Sync), which fires the flash tube multiple times during the time the slit traverses the sensor. Such units require communication with the camera and are thus dedicated to a particular camera make. The multiple flashes result in a significant decrease in guide number, since each is only a part of the total flash power, but it's all that illuminates any particular part of the sensor. In general, if s is the shutter speed, and t is the shutter traverse time, the guide number reduces by √s / t. For example, if the guide number is 100, and the shutter traverse time is 5 ms (a shutter speed of 1/200s), and the shutter speed is set to 1/2000s (0.5 ms), the guide number reduces by a factor of √0.5 / 5, or about 3.16, so the resultant guide number at this speed would be about 32. Current (2010) flash units frequently have much lower guide numbers in HSS mode than in normal modes, even at speeds below the shutter traverse time. For example, the Mecablitz 58 AF-1 digital flash unit has a guide number of 58 in normal operation, but only 20 in HSS mode, even at low speeds.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/