[rollei_list] Re: Rolleiflash Disaster

  • From: Eric Goldstein <egoldste@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 22:12:45 -0500

One of our New England treasures (now gone) Jack Naylor had a long
personal friendship with Doc and Jack had a wonderful collection of
the original prints Doc most loved. Doc was very much the photographer
at heart... I spent many an hour talking with Jack and enjoying those
prints and the stories behind them, along with all the other beautiful
original art in the Naylor Collection. I sure do miss him...

Eric Goldstein

--

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 9:37 PM, Jim Brick <jim@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Anyone interested in everything there is to know about 'Doc' Edgerton,
> including the contents of all of his research notebooks, go here:
>
> http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/
>
> I never met 'Doc' but in 1989 I took a book publishing workshop with his
> younger brother (sorry - can't remember his first name).
>
> Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Doc
> Edgerton.
>
> http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Bomb.html
>
> Jim
>
>
> On Dec 7, 2009, at 5:50 PM, Richard Knoppow wrote:
>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: <aghalide@xxxxxxx>
>> To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009 4:49 PM
>> Subject: [rollei_list] Re: Rolleiflash Disaster
>>
>>
>> Harold Edgerton used flash to produce a stroboscopic effect. He was famous
>> for his high-speed stop action photos. The high-speed photography was
>> instantaneous. Flash bulbs are not instantaneous. They require what was
>> called m or f synchronization. Camera shutters used to offer either x for
>> instantaneous for electronic flash, or m or f delay which represented the
>> time between when the shutter was fired and when the flash went off. You
>> have the possibility of 3 delays for the flash when you click the shutter on
>> older cameras. Only x has been retained, and they don't even call it x.
>>
>> Ed Farber brought the electronic flash to the populace. He used a 510V
>> battery to obtain enough voltage to produce the flash. The studio units
>> utilizing low voltage battery packs were often very large and heavy and not
>> practical. Eventually with the advent of the transistor to produce enought
>> voltage the units were smaller and more practical. In some cases too small.
>> He invented a high speed electronic flash in a company called Strobo
>> Research in Rochester, NY. Which was bought by Graflex and permitted him to
>> retire at an early age.  rather than use a very large electronic flash to
>> produce high speed result, Ed Farber (I edited his column about flash) used
>> what I think was a rectifier to take the low voltage from the batteries and
>> make it a high voltage. These rectifiers were very large. With the advent of
>> the transister in 1959, Multiblitz in Germany did away with the rectifier
>> and used transisters to increase the voltage from the battery pack to
>> produce a practical hand-held electronic flash unit.
>>
>> Ed Meyers
>>
>>  Harold Edgerton was one of the inventors of strobe flash. Early strobe
>> units were for motion study and used low intensity Neon lamps. The famous
>> General Radio Strobotac is an example. AFAIK the first studio strobes were
>> made by Kodak under the name Kodatron. These came out sometime around the
>> late 1930s. They were very large and heavy lamps which ran on AC. The early
>> ones were designed to produce the fastest flash time. They were very noisy
>> due to the mechanical stress on the capacitors and other parts by the sudden
>> change in energy state. I remember them sounding like pistol shots. Later
>> Kodatrons had a resistor in series with the lamp to increase the flash time.
>> They still stopped most motion but  were quieter and had less problem with
>> reciprocity failure effects, a major problem when the exposure times were on
>> the order of 1/10,000 sec or less.
>>   I remember the name Strobo Research but not the trade-name they used.
>> The use of high voltage batteries was made necessary by the lack of the kind
>> of circuitry needed to generated it from a low voltage source without being
>> large and heavy.
>>   Some early strobe flashes had built in delays to account for the M delay
>> in many cameras. One could switch from X (instantaneous) to M as required.
>>   I believe most  of the flash lamps were made by General Electric.
>>   Edgerton, Germeshousen, and Grier was the name of the company who
>> controlled the strobe patents.
>>
>> --
>> Richard Knoppow
>> Los Angeles, CA, USA
>> dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> ---
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