The photoflash batteries are made with relatively large plate area and less plate thickness, so they can maintain a low impedance (and therefore source a large initial- and peak current for a fairly short time) even after repeated flash cycles compared to standard batteries. The tradeoff is a Much shorter life and a tendency to fade more rapidly at high(er) temperatures. This is very similar to the tradeoffs between vehicle starter batteries and marine deep-discharge batteries.
Compared to the ~state-of-the-art in 1957, modern alkalines should handily run that flash. If they turn out to die ~young, you Can still get photoflash batteries at better camera stores last I checked (~2001?).
Note that capacitors come in ~regular and photoflash varieties as well and for the same reasons. If you're building something that needs a fast, high current pulse, the photoflash caps (or 'laser discharge' caps as the larger and higher-rated units are often labelled) are well worth the premium. Regular capacitors can Easily be driven so hard by flash type circuits that they explode. Having build a few things of that sort, I have seen it happen ... ;-S Switching power supplies also require such low-ESR* capacitors and one of their major failure modes is the caps exploding in a series of high-voltage arcs.
* ESR => Effective Series Resistance or Equivalent Series Resistance depending on the source you look at.
The photoflash capacitors he's referring to are for xenon strobes. For dumping pulses into flashbulbs, any old capacitor should do fine. Note that you should probably have a snubber network of some sort, more to protect the camera contacts than the capacitor.
(no subject)
Compared to the ~state-of-the-art in 1957, modern alkalines should handily run that flash. If they turn out to die ~young, you Can still get photoflash batteries at better camera stores last I checked (~2001?).
Note that capacitors come in ~regular and photoflash varieties as well and for the same reasons. If you're building something that needs a fast, high current pulse, the photoflash caps (or 'laser discharge' caps as the larger and higher-rated units are often labelled) are well worth the premium. Regular capacitors can Easily be driven so hard by flash type circuits that they explode. Having build a few things of that sort, I have seen it happen ... ;-S Switching power supplies also require such low-ESR* capacitors and one of their major failure modes is the caps exploding in a series of high-voltage arcs.
* ESR => Effective Series Resistance or Equivalent Series Resistance depending on the source you look at.
(no subject)
But first, to remember on which machine (and in which browser) I bookmarked the site where I can still buy flashbulbs...
(no subject)
into flashbulbs, any old capacitor should do fine. Note that you should probably have
a snubber network of some sort, more to protect the camera contacts than the capacitor.