Everybody that has a small digital camera knows the problem of using slaves because of the pre-flash that the camera uses to set the exposure: the preflash triggers the slave flash that thus fires before the shutter opens.
Plenty of solutions have been proposed and a number of circuits were published in the electronics monthly 'Elektor' but frankly, generally these proved not to work or at least cause problems with a lot of people trying to build them.
I managed to build a working unit with a minimum of parts that I have build several times and they all work, so it is certainly 'reproducable'. The picture shows two finished units: one with a fototransistor and one with a fotodiode
One thing though. The circuit I am proposing is for a camera with 1 preflash. Also, it is not an original circuit. I first found something like it on foto website Flickr that had a working version and a non working version and after some digging i came on a russian website (!) that gave me a lot of useful information as well.
The circuit is pretty sensitive: I got it to react inside with a distance of 5 meters and an indirect flash
Let's start with the Bill of materials:
Phototransistor (e.g. BPW 40) or photodiode (e.g. BP104)
CD4001 quadruple NANDgate
R 220k 3x
R 120 K
R 620 k
R 27 k
R 10 k
Diode 1n4148
C 1nF
C100 nF
C 1uF (elco)
C 10uF (elco)
perfboard (18x12 holes) (I did build one on a 9x10 holes but you dont want to torture yourself)
Thyristor TIC106D
9V battery clip
14 pin IC foot
Optional:
small bridge rectifier
switch 1 x make
switch 1x switch
The circuit is pretty straightforward: The photo transistor/-diode picks up a pulse that gets filtered and amplified in the circuit around the BC547.
I will not go into detail in the exact signals on the various nandgates but what happens is that the first pulse of the flash opens the nandgates for about 100ms, waiting for a second puls if that comes the final nand gate becomes high, opening the Thyristor T3.
T3 can be used to directly trigger a flash, if you are sure about the polarity (most likely the center pin is the positive and should go to the anode) but one could add 4 diodes or a small bridge rectifier (make that a couple of 100 Volt unless you are sure about the voltage on the flash shoe) to make the polarity unimportant.
If you are using a photodiode make sure the kathode is connected to the '+' and the anode is connected to the junction of R1 and C6, as is shown in the second figure.
If you are pretty sure about what the + and the - of your sync jack are, then you can leave out the bridge diodes as in figure 3
If you want to feed the circuit from your flash rather than from a battery, figure 4 is for you. Realise though that not all flashes will work with that so if you are building it, I suggest you wait with soldering the 4M7 in place and test the circuit first with a battery, so if things dont work you will know it is the circuit and not your flash having a bad reaction.
Plenty of solutions have been proposed and a number of circuits were published in the electronics monthly 'Elektor' but frankly, generally these proved not to work or at least cause problems with a lot of people trying to build them.
I managed to build a working unit with a minimum of parts that I have build several times and they all work, so it is certainly 'reproducable'. The picture shows two finished units: one with a fototransistor and one with a fotodiode
One thing though. The circuit I am proposing is for a camera with 1 preflash. Also, it is not an original circuit. I first found something like it on foto website Flickr that had a working version and a non working version and after some digging i came on a russian website (!) that gave me a lot of useful information as well.
The circuit is pretty sensitive: I got it to react inside with a distance of 5 meters and an indirect flash
Let's start with the Bill of materials:
Phototransistor (e.g. BPW 40) or photodiode (e.g. BP104)
CD4001 quadruple NANDgate
R 220k 3x
R 120 K
R 620 k
R 27 k
R 10 k
Diode 1n4148
C 1nF
C100 nF
C 1uF (elco)
C 10uF (elco)
perfboard (18x12 holes) (I did build one on a 9x10 holes but you dont want to torture yourself)
Thyristor TIC106D
9V battery clip
14 pin IC foot
Optional:
small bridge rectifier
switch 1 x make
switch 1x switch
The circuit is pretty straightforward: The photo transistor/-diode picks up a pulse that gets filtered and amplified in the circuit around the BC547.
I will not go into detail in the exact signals on the various nandgates but what happens is that the first pulse of the flash opens the nandgates for about 100ms, waiting for a second puls if that comes the final nand gate becomes high, opening the Thyristor T3.
T3 can be used to directly trigger a flash, if you are sure about the polarity (most likely the center pin is the positive and should go to the anode) but one could add 4 diodes or a small bridge rectifier (make that a couple of 100 Volt unless you are sure about the voltage on the flash shoe) to make the polarity unimportant.
If you are using a photodiode make sure the kathode is connected to the '+' and the anode is connected to the junction of R1 and C6, as is shown in the second figure.
If you are pretty sure about what the + and the - of your sync jack are, then you can leave out the bridge diodes as in figure 3
If you want to feed the circuit from your flash rather than from a battery, figure 4 is for you. Realise though that not all flashes will work with that so if you are building it, I suggest you wait with soldering the 4M7 in place and test the circuit first with a battery, so if things dont work you will know it is the circuit and not your flash having a bad reaction.
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Signing UpStep 1: Slaveflash for automatic camera's with pre flash: construction
Construction
My way of constructing it was to solder a 14 pin IC holder on the perfboard and first start connecting the pins of the various nand gates: so i put a blob of solder between pin 1 and 2 and between 8 and 9. Then I took a bit of wire and connected 5 with one and 2. Then I took the components and found them a place as close as possible to the connections that needed to be made and used wires at the underside of the perfboard to connect everything. That seems daunting, but in fact it proved quite easy, just make sure that you cross out the connections you made with a felt pen on a print of the circuit and you'll be fine.
You could add the switch to switch off the supply voltage, but I did not bother, i just unhook the battery. You could also use a switch as indicated to switch between preflash ignore and no preflash ignore but I did not bother with that either.
It is possible to omit the 9Volt battery and to feed the circuit from the sync jack (via a resistor a diode and a zener) but I would not bother. I tried it and it works for some flashes but not for others: apparently the load on the sync jack can influence the recycling time.
PCB: it is of course very well possible to build this on a PCB and you might be able to make it pretty small if you use smd components.
I have added a fritzing file to print the PCB. Realize though that I have not build it on this print, I uesed the perfboard as seen above. I have added the PCB design for your convenience and I double checked it, but I have not tested it (yet)
Box
I put my finished circuit in a small translucent plastic box, the kind that is used to pack bolts, nuts and screws (I use a lot of these boxes in my projects). They are quite handy, they are basically free as I already bought the bolts and it is a kind of recycling by keeping them out of the waste circuit. The box is translucent enough to still let the phototransistor/-diode pick up the flash
My way of constructing it was to solder a 14 pin IC holder on the perfboard and first start connecting the pins of the various nand gates: so i put a blob of solder between pin 1 and 2 and between 8 and 9. Then I took a bit of wire and connected 5 with one and 2. Then I took the components and found them a place as close as possible to the connections that needed to be made and used wires at the underside of the perfboard to connect everything. That seems daunting, but in fact it proved quite easy, just make sure that you cross out the connections you made with a felt pen on a print of the circuit and you'll be fine.
You could add the switch to switch off the supply voltage, but I did not bother, i just unhook the battery. You could also use a switch as indicated to switch between preflash ignore and no preflash ignore but I did not bother with that either.
It is possible to omit the 9Volt battery and to feed the circuit from the sync jack (via a resistor a diode and a zener) but I would not bother. I tried it and it works for some flashes but not for others: apparently the load on the sync jack can influence the recycling time.
PCB: it is of course very well possible to build this on a PCB and you might be able to make it pretty small if you use smd components.
I have added a fritzing file to print the PCB. Realize though that I have not build it on this print, I uesed the perfboard as seen above. I have added the PCB design for your convenience and I double checked it, but I have not tested it (yet)
Box
I put my finished circuit in a small translucent plastic box, the kind that is used to pack bolts, nuts and screws (I use a lot of these boxes in my projects). They are quite handy, they are basically free as I already bought the bolts and it is a kind of recycling by keeping them out of the waste circuit. The box is translucent enough to still let the phototransistor/-diode pick up the flash
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It would be simpler then to use a microcontroller (Attiny or PIC) that can just count flashes and has a 'learning' mode to make it suitable for each and every flash. There are some of those circuits available on the net (with a PIC) and it seemed foolish to just reproduce that :-).
Maybe if i feel like it, I may develop such a ting with an attiny 13 but currently i have no need for it :-)