I was doing an empty-camera test involving using my Elan IIe's built-in pop-up flash to trigger two slaved Vivitar flashes and got a somewhat disturbing result.

So as not to expose my (eventual) subject with the built-in flash, I was blocking its light with a piece of black card angled over the housing. Specifically, with the flash popped up, I rested the one-foot square card against the edges of the top and bottom of the flash housing.

After firing a test shot, I discovered a grey rectangle, exactly the size and shape of the flash tube, on the surface of the black card! I fired a few more times and got the same result. Once, I'm sure I saw a single strand of smoke (xenon gas?) rise up from underneath the flash?

Is is dangerous to your camera/flash to use a card in this way?

Thank you,

Roy Kekewich

-- Roy Kekewich (roykekewich@yahoo.com), July 25, 2000

Answers

The built-in flash is not that hot. You can put your finger right on it and not get burned. You also don't need the card to be black. A white one will effectively block enough light to make it undetectable to the film provided the slave lightes are providing adequate lighting. This would probably make your slaves work more reliably as well. I assume you are not using TTL slave sensors (Lite-Links) so you might try inputing -2 stops of flash compensation on the pop-up unit. If you did this, the card might not be needed at all, depending on the effect you are looking for.

-- Jim Strutz (j.strutz@gci.net), July 25, 2000.