What is "Harvest-Worthy" from a point-and-shoot camera?

psi seeker 34 said:

I had a Leyden jar capacitor which according to the internets should have had less than a 2pf capacitance. I was bitten by it when it had been charged to about 2KV. Unfortunately this was the first and last time I touched both ends with both hands......... it was like being hit in the chest with a baseball bat.

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I suppose you underestimated the capacity (or voltage) then.. 2pf @ 2kV is not that much energy.

To give some concept of magnitude: paddles used for cardiac restart work with something in the order of 200 joules or more. At 2kv you would be looking in the order of 50 uF for that.

Really dangrous starts at about 10 joules of stored energy, which is not beyond the reach of camera flashes at all. Most compacts don't have that much power, but a proper shoe-mounted external flash unit could easily hold enough energy to pose a serious danger if you were stupid enough to touch both ends of it with different hands.

It's amazing how much can be stored in such little space.

I tried to test what each lens does with a pen laser pointer, but it was too weak. (probably a dead diode) I'll try them out when I finish my laser.

Thank you for all of your input and advice. :thanks:

-Zachary

In reply to benm's post:
Just because it isn't lethal doesn't mean it doesn't hurt a lot.

Btw I have no way to measure the capacitance so I honestly don't know what the exact measurement is. I do however know that my volt meter,bridge rectifier,and capacitor broke when the voltage reached 2KV fortunately I had more of each to work with.I also failed to mention that the ballast happened to be on and connected at the time
:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

psi seeker 34 said:

In reply to benm's post:
Just because it isn't lethal doesn't mean it doesn't hurt a lot.

Btw I have no way to measure the capacitance so I honestly don't know what the exact measurement is. I do however know that my volt meter,bridge rectifier,and capacitor broke when the voltage reached 2KV fortunately I had more of each to work with.I also failed to mention that the ballast happened to be on and connected at the time
:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

Click to expand...

I will have to say this to you. A Camera flash is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS to play with!
Disposable flashes and small internal ones can give you a lethal shock, though rare.
Large external flashes can and have killed people when repairing them.
Large industrial flashes are able to blow fingers off and break bones. They kill instantly.
An old photographer around where I used to live lost 2 of his fingers due to a vaporized screwdriver. He made contact with the cap bank and the driver exploded. The resulting flash was hot enough to burn off 2 fingers to the bone.

If you seperate the layers in the screen there is one layer that can be used as a line diffraction grating of sorts. the cap, battery, and flash assembly can be made into a touch taser.

Nice thin FS mirror (keystone shaped) inside cheapy poliroid one-step and similar cameras.

nice 3v dc motors inside auto advance and auto re-wind 35mm cameras as well as flash.
the older poliroid cameras have a rangefinder on top that MIGHT be used to combine lasers by replacing parts inside with dichros or BSC and drilling a hole in one end.

next time you go into a drugstore that does film-ask if they have any one-time use cameras you can have free after the film is removed-- there is a new AA battery inside every one. And a flash.

Watch out for those caps--ouch !!!

have fun ----recycle your leftovers... plz

Seoul_lasers said:

I will have to say this to you. A Camera flash is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS to play with!
Disposable flashes and small internal ones can give you a lethal shock, though rare.
Large external flashes can and have killed people when repairing them.
Large industrial flashes are able to blow fingers off and break bones. They kill instantly.
An old photographer around where I used to live lost 2 of his fingers due to a vaporized screwdriver. He made contact with the cap bank and the driver exploded. The resulting flash was hot enough to burn off 2 fingers to the bone.

Click to expand...

I seem to remember reading that 12J across the heart is the lethal figure.

The energy stored in a capacitor can be calculated with the formula (C*V^2)/2. The capacitor you have there is probably 100uF, so you've got something like 5.5J there. You definitely don't want to grab a terminal in each hand. I extracted a lot of these caps from disposable cameras and got bit by a fair few of them, and it is not pleasant.

I haven't even dared to charge my 450V 3300uF or 68V 0.27F capacitors yet.

-Trevor

The thing with lines over the flash makes lines when you shine a laser at it.

The tiny litte "interesting thing" is a biphase stepper motor. I can tell from the 4 solder joints = 2 coils.

The pyramid shape is a prism that will deviate a beam exactly 90'

The blue square is BQ38 glass, it adsorbs IR.

Steve