Camera Flash Type Switch Device

[Byronnn]

Hello,
I don't know much at all about electronics, but I'm hoping to get a push in the right direction with a project I'd like to make.

I like photography, but I can't afford to spend $300 each on several professional studio flashes, so I want to build my own. I would like to take something like this:
https://www.oneprojectcloser.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/tripod-work-lamp.jpg

Add a dimmer to it, then add some sort of device that can turn in on/off in 1/20th of a second of less, once per time the button is pressed (In an ideal world the length of flash would be adjustable as well, but that's more than I expect to accomplish).

Back in the day, my father was an electrician He has explained that a dimmer is a simple task, but he doesn't know how a single-flash button would work.

I understand that strobe circuits are simple, but I would like the light to flash only once (each time the button is pressed).

I basically want a large, dim-able exterior camera flash that will hopefully cost me much less than $300. I don't want it to sync with the camera or anything.

Any help would be appreciated! I don't mind doing the research and learning as I go, but I'm not sure where to start.

Byron

 

[crutschow]

What type of lamp are you trying to flash? Normal camera strobes use high voltage flash tubes. It sounds like you are talking about a normal incandescent bulb, which takes about a quarter second to reach full output due to the long thermal time-constant of the filament, and can not be flashed on and off in 1/20th of a second. The turn-on time would be shortened if you maintained the bulb in a dim condition during the off time, but the turn-off time would still be significant.

 

[Dx3]

Those look like quartz lamps to me. 300 and 500 watts each are standard bulb sizes. The slow nature of the bulbs can be used to your advantage by adjusting the length of the "on" time.

It goes something like this: Find out what signal "the button" can provide. Use that to trigger a 555 timer chip. Design the timer to be adjustable from10 milliseconds to 100 milliseconds or so. Teach the 555 chip to fire a triac. Plug the lamps into the triac circuit.

Can you understand this idea?

 

[crutschow]

Those look like quartz lamps to me. 300 and 500 watts each are standard bulb sizes. The slow nature of the bulbs can be used to your advantage by adjusting the length of the "on" time.

It goes something like this: Find out what signal "the button" can provide. Use that to trigger a 555 timer chip. Design the timer to be adjustable from10 milliseconds to 100 milliseconds or so. Teach the 555 chip to fire a triac. Plug the lamps into the triac circuit.

It's unlikely that you can get that type of bulb to turn on and off in under 500ms.

 

[Sceadwian]

These lamps will never act like a true 'flash' you can pulse them on and off, but the length of the light pulse will never come even close to approaching the short burst of a true flash as crut was saying. I don't think working directly with AC mains is a wise idea, personally judging from the results you want I think using high brightness car headlight bulbs run from an ATX power supply or directly from a car battery would be better than the halogen work lights. The problem with this is you coming into this with little electronics knowledge which means you want someone else to do most of the work and you build it, no one wants to do that kind of work for free, and you're already on the cheap =) Most people here are nice, but work is work!

From what little you've said so far how about this. These lights are already rated for continuous duty, turn them on when you need them to full brightness and use the shutter speed, fstop and grey filters to control the actual amount of light that gets to the camera. There is technically no need for ultra bright fast flashes for a LOT of photography if you just tweak your setttings a bit, but this requires a pretty solid understanding of the technical side of photography.