The sad, yet unended story of the Canon photoflashes

[67Dart273]

LOLOL. Several years ago I bought a modern Canon speedlite photoflash from a friend who is now gone. Late this year a local guy had a twin to the first one for sale cheap. I thought "great!! TWO!!". And went and got it, just like new, steal of a price, works great...........Get it home I MISTAKENLY thought these models would "one trigger the other" but not these. But I got out the previous one, and now it WILL NOT WORK. So, it's in a pan in the basement waiting for 'ambition' and talent

TODAY a --turns out to be a nice woman--had some older Canon stuff for sale. An Elan film camera with a decent lens which I bought for 50, two more lenses one of which will not focus on newer cameras, and one an old manual Canon lens, and she ended up giving me the whole basket for an additional 20.

And........A VINTAGE Canon speedlite meant to go with the old Canon A-1 manual camera, which I could not get to work. So she gave me that

NOW an ASIDE...........I do have some old flashes, mostly Vivitar, some the nice big powerful thyristor (photocell controlled) ones. There are a COUPLE of things you MUST do to use these safely on modern DSLR bodies
1....Obviously look it over for corrosion, install fresh batteries, fire it up, flash it with the test button a few times and see if it works
2....Take a multimeter between the "shoe" ground and the center trigger contact and with it powered on and charged, measure that voltage. If it is "low" say, 12V or below, then safe for modern cameras. If it's "high" up over 50-100V then don't use it--might be OK and might destroy the trigger circuit in your camera
3..Examine the "shoe." If there is only one contact, it is a "generic" flash and will be fine. If there are more than one contact, and even if it is "Canon dedicated," it will NOT properly communicate with the body. So carefully take the bottom shoe apart and remove the extra contact pins or otherwise disconnect them. This "converts" the flash to a 'generic" single contact shoe

SO!! Now we have a "free" Canon Model 199A flash, which "I thought" would be cool to be able to use with the modern gear because, well, "I shoot Canon." So let's tear it apart and find out. And it turns out to be a real nightmare. What you see here is a power supply rigged to simulate battery, the huge capacitor has been "reformed" (I hope) with a power supply, and now it is clip-wired back into the flash to test it. These, by the way, charge to OVER 300 VOLTS so they are nothing to play around with. I AM NOT SURE I am able to get the damn thing all actually back together.

Not that it's tested, I'll buy a new replacement cap and "we'll see"

 

[67Dart273]

Turns out one of the lenses, an old manual focus for the old Canon FD/ A-1 stuff is "quite a deal." This is a 3rd party lens, a Kiron 28-210mm F4-5.6 zoom with "macro" function. With an adapter, I an shoot it on my little Canon M50 Taken late this afternoon, handheld, at full zoom, wide open at F5.6, "I am shaky"

Same view at 28mm I think I bumped the focus

 

[67Dart273]

The lens dwarfs my little biddy Canon M-50 camera-- Lens is just like new, I doubt it has been used much and came with a Hoya sky filter

 

[pishta]

I remember taking a Oly C-5050 apart and the flash capacitor was still charged. I hit it with my finger and it took all of me to not drop the half disassembled camera. I arced another in a Pentax DSLR, POP! Those flash caps dont zap you like a coil, they feel like they inject the voltage into you for about 1/2 second and turn your arm into a noodle. My collection...still looking for a TTL metered modern Pentax DSLR flash.

 

[67Dart273]

That Vivitar you have there is similar to some I have. They work well. Even with no camera communication, you cat set them up for "auto" with the photocell and they will automatically compensate. Take a couple of test shots and away you go

Discharging caps...........you should not just short caps with a jumper wire. Especially specialized caps such as flash caps, and modern caps with very high capacitance--these can generate enough peak current duing a "shorted" condition to damage themselves

So far as your shock experience, just remember........this is the general principle in a defib machine...one hell of a jolt from a great big cap---across your chest

 

[67Dart273]

AND NOW YET another annoying story from the old days Before I joined the Navy, a local guy was "all in" on Army MARS and the Civil Defense program. In those two programs you could get surplus radio equipment for the local Civil Defense program, as well as "stuff" through the "MARS" (Military Affiliate Amateur Radio System). So Neal had obtained a late WWII great-big-heavy-not -to -mention large AM/ CW radio transmitter / receiver called an ARC-2

This thing ran off 24VDC, and the 24V also ran a "dynomotor" which is a motor and generator on the same shaft, and which runs (normally) off some low DC voltage, and produces some high DC voltage to operate vacuum tubes--in this case around 800VDC

All that had been yarded out and a homemade power supply built by a different local "kid" who ran out of ambition, so it came to "me." BUT IT WAS BUILT out of "junkbox" parts and was not quite "right"---common in the old days. The power supply IN FACT PRODUCED over 1000-1200V when the transmitter was not keyed.

The power supply had a HIGH VOLTAGE FUSE HOLDER right in the front panel, and because the voltage "climbed" when unkeyed, this means that when you keyed the thing, it would do one of two things..........A.........blow the HV fuse, or B..........if you were lucky the tubes would drag down the voltage enough that it would operate.

So I was young, broke, and stupid and RUNNING OUT OF fuses to troubleshoot the thing, so I removed the fuseholder cap and STUFFED A SCREWDRIVER into the fuse holder. So now we have a driver sticking out from the front panel, and WHEN KEYED it had anywhere from 800-1200VDC on the blade!!!!

So, I'm tuning the thing and HAVE MY FINGERS around the metal tuning knob and somehow got one of my fingers in contact with the "fuse" screwdriver. NO PROBLEM, it is NOT keyed.

But then I DID KEY IT by pressing the push to talk of the NICE BIG METAL POTATO MIKE in my other HAND!!!

Like this one..........big..........metal..........heavy...........METAL

So, ya know how in the cartoons when some"body" gets hurt there are "starts" circling around their heads? Know why? THAT REALLY HAPPENS!!!

Some time later, no idea, seconds, a minute, many minutes, I "woke up." On the floor. I was still holding the mike, RIPPED out of the coily-cord, the screwdriver was launched across the room, and the force of the thing had DRAGGED THE RADIO halfway off the counter and DAMN NEAR BALANCED on the edge of the bench. It weighed, ?? 80 lbs.

 

[67Dart273]

^^What this all boils down to is^^ I had just had about 1200VDC through from one hand clear across to the other hand. The DC causes your muscles to violently contract, and by the way, my hands, arms, shoulders HURT for days after that