Tilt-A-Mite flashgun capacitor upgrade

[Darklight]

This may be old news to many of you who own the old (but venerable) Tilt-A-Mite flashguns, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

I have a ton of these little buggers, but many of them were non-functional due to bad capacitors. The batteries are (remarkably) still readily available from various on line resources (specifically Radioshack.com). The Eveready 504 (NEDA 220) battery is listed on their site as Catalog #: 23-9008.

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?c ... id=23-9008

But I digress...

I finally got around to tinkering with some new capacitors, and found several that work very well. These are axial lead type, and very nearly fit all by themselves! They are best soldered in, and this is quite easily done. I soldered them directly in place right to the metal leads in the gun.



The Radioshack catalog number on the 1000uF cap I chose is 272-1019. It is a 35WVDC type.

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?c ... ite=search

This upgrade has given new life to many of my old guns. And, boy, that little red status lamp really has punch now! So far in testing, I've had no problems.

CG

[caverdoc]

CG
Thanks a bunch for this VERY useful info. I've got about five or six of these little rascals sitting around, now I can get them up and running.
Doc Kennedy

[claustrophobe]

I've got some Sylvania Press 40 bulbs (clear) that I'd like to use. I do not have a flashgun, but I test fired one in a clamp-on utility light with an aluminum reflector and a 6 volt battery. I was thinking that the easiest way to go might be to just open the shutter and flash them without bothering with a synch device. How critical is the reflector size and geometry? Also, as these are clear bulbs, not blue, I would expect daylight film to render the colors rather warm. Do you have any advice, other than using tungsten film? Maybe the color shift would not be too objectionable...

[Realms]

You might try placing a blue gel over the reflector to get the correct color temp. As for the surface of the reflector, the smoother the better. It can effect it up to a stop or so. You are doing exactly what I did though and I have had good results with it. Last weekend I shot several pics using 40's and No2's with the utillity light reflectors. My biggest uses a stainless salad bowl with a hole punched in the middle for the socket to pass through.

[mgala]

i use blue gel over the reflector, but only when i have to mix the bulbs light with the flashguns light. it's complicated for mount, you loose some light, and effect is not perfect.

if you working with prints made on the digital lab, you can use regular film with your bulbs. you just have to make the correction of curves on the file.

http://calendar.speleo.pl/

[claustrophobe]

Great idea, but if I punch a hole in my wife's salad bowl, I won't be able to use it when I change the oil in my truck anymore. I think I'll visit Kmart.....
Thanks for the tips.

[Realms]

Dude the salad bowl rocks. Hit walmart and splurge. It's well worth it. I used a greenlee hydraulic punch to make a nice hole in mine. If you can get a hold of one of those it sure makes getting a hole easy.

[pj]

Perhaps I missed something here, but in reading the responses about using the clear Press 40 bulbs, no one has mentioned the fact that clear bulbs can be used easily in digital photography by simply adjusting the white balance to the incandescent setting. That or just shoot in RAW and then convert to the proper color balance. In using clear bulbs, you should be consistent throughout the image or expect to do a lot of local adjusting for color balance if you use another light source that is not incandescent.

Remember, too, that clear bulbs are about 1 f-stop brighter in light output than a blue-colored bulb. Now we finally have a use for all those clear bulbs that we picked up at yard sales but thought we'd never find a way to use them in cave photography. Rejoice!!!

pjcaver