Odd contraption of a photographic nature...

[Augustus]

Should be achievable .. my single LED flashlight will project a decent light beam 200m easily..

But I imagine the logistics of linking an LED array to the flash shoe on a camera requires a little more in-depth knowledge. . .

and the amount of communication between gun and camera is incredible now and all in a thousandth of a sec or less. they really are incredible nowadays. They light things so well.

I'll probably end up with one of the sunpak ones, just wanted to try this. Manual focusing in low or no light and in a hurry is the big issue.

oh, and scaring people with your 1950's brain ray gun scanner device inches away from their faces.

 

[barry2017]

Can you extend it further forwards if you're using a bellows and getting in really close?

 

[FMJ]

Wondering if an array of cree LED's (or similar) could be rigged to fire instead of the flash . . could be made very unobtrusive..

Yes. There are several links via the (expanded) reader comments on this lifehacker page. Start down the rabbit hole from here

 

[REKIBorter]

Geoff Waugh used a ring flash for some of the photos in the recent MBR article.

 

[MikeD]

Have to say, not being the world's biggest Dig fan, it's one of the better digital evolutions - flash exposure control.

Although ironically, plenty of pros don't use that stuff - flashes to manual. If you're using radio triggers you're stuck with manual control anyway. The auto stuff can make some weird decisions under certain circumstances.

 

[dyna-ti]

Piccys in use and piccys you get

 

[Dipsy]

with one of these you lose about one Fstop of light... but could be useful for insects etc..

I am about to get a big portable rig for car and location photography, they also do a very nice ring flash..

I am looking at this. http://www.lencarta.com/safari-portable ... /index.php

Though if you want a ring flash. http://www.lencarta.com/safari-portable ... /index.php

this would be more than powerful enough for shooting mtb comps etc..

 

[ragnar1984]

Not sure if LED's could match a flash gun for light output. Be good if they could as they'd presumably use a lot less power.

That particular flash can store about 80 joules (watt-seconds) of energy and can dump all of it through the discharge tube in 1/1000 second = 80.000 Watts. Not all of it gets converted to light, of course, but I would guess that it can produce somewhere around 40-50 Kilowatts of light. LEDs are not quite there yet.