On Monday, Mar 15, 2004, at 05:43 US/Pacific, Alan B. Pearce wrote:

>>  (a common disposable camera photoflash is about
>> 8J at high voltages, and those are regularly discharged
>> through pretty much a dead short.)
>
> A camera flash often uses the inductance of the wires from the
> capacitor to the tube as the current limiting impedance when the tube
> flashes. When my father was servicing camera equipment some of the
> flash guns seemed to have inordinately long wires to the tube for this
> reason.

Huh.  The disposable flash units I was talking about typically have the
flash tube soldered directly to the small PCB.  I've seen inductors
mentioned as a way to get shorter flashes, but not really as a current
limitting device.  An interesting concept (but inductors don't limit
current, they limit di/dt, right?)

BillW

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