Peter and Alan

> Modern flash units do cut down the duration of the flash if not the entire
> charge on the capacitor is needed, this preserves the remainder of the
> stored energy in the capacitor and makes the flash duration shorter.

I went out today and picked up a bagful of used disposable cameras

http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/joecolquitt/disposable_camera.html

And plenty more where they came from

The capacitor is unmarked apart from T0440 (which one could guess
is the voltage rating). One of the caps still had 170V on it. I estimated
its capacitance by comparing the charge time compared with a marked
220uF

The capacitor is right across the tube terminals. The whole circuit is
pretty basic. It's a small tube, only 21mm long in total, with just 13mm
visible in the reflector. Looks like the shutter leaf switch sends a pulse
from the reservoir cap into the trigger transformer

The plan is to substitute this tube in the 22uF circuit and see what
sort of light is produced. Then substitute the 250uF for the 22uF,
then re-install the U-tube

It could be that the camera tube has an expected lifetime of something
a little over the 20 shots on the film. Or it may actually last much longer

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