This year i will be trying to revisit some photo locations (primarily places with water) and experiment photographing them using flashbulbs.

I have read as much as i can find on the subject but any advice that anyone can offer would greatly be appreciated as  i am working with a limited supply.

For those interested i will be using a digital camera that i have full manual controll over with a max exposure time of 2 minutes. The flashbulbs being used range from AG1's all the way through to PF100's.

Cave Monkey.

Obviously you know why you want to use them, slightly more light (with big bulbs), but mainly the blurred water effect.

My experience is that they are fairly easy to use, but the following may (or may not) be useful:

Check the colour of the bulbs.  Bulbs are normally blue tinted (not the blue spot to check that it should fire), this blue tint means that the colour of light is similar to that of an electronic flashgun.  If the bulbs appear clear then you'll probably have to correct the colour balance later on.

If one bulb isn't enough, sellotape two or more together and when one fires the rest should fire too.

Wear gloves whilst changing bulbs, my bulb firers of (certain) death regularly fire bulbs at random.  You might want to give flash monkeys some goggles and instruct the person holding the bulb to point it away from themselves and other people just in case it explodes when you fire it.  I have a firefly bulb unit (of certain death) and a Gibson unit configured with a 9v battery which is slightly less scary.

Thanks for the input biffa.

I will be using a mix of clear and blue bulbs, i am intending to try and exploit the clear bulb effect as through tests i have done in a 'dark' environment, the colour depth is greater.

The points you made about using gloves and goggles, i will certainly take on, i will however be using home-made firing devices made out of drainpipe and dog bowls as all the propper units i find are going for silly money (George lucas). My units already have a two stroke firering system, ie one button has to be held in to prime and another has to be pressed to fire. I accept this makes me dependant on flash monkeys, but hey, its better to have a gimp in the shot to add scale and it saves on bulbs.

On the note of bulbs, if anyone that reads this has any that they no longer need, could i suggest that you donate them to your local caving club. The reason i say this is there is only one propper manufacturer of flashbulbs now, and they only sell huge great big bloody things that cook anything within a mile. The smaller size bulbs that a lot of people have packed away and forgotten are the most usefull. Sure you could make a few pennies by selling them, but they are only really usefull to three groups of people, cave and stress-testing photographers and collectors. Collectors i respect, but how many of the same bulb do you need ?, stress testers have financial backing and therefore can spend £25 a bulb, carvers are trying to capture a moment that will last forever.

shoot in RAW so you can tweek the colour temp later

traff said:

shoot in RAW so you can tweek the colour temp later

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But only if you shoot exclusively with blue OR clear bulbs, not both!

Cave Monkey said:

the propper units i find are going for silly money (George lucas).

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Last unit I bought for the fold away reflector and bulb socket cost me £3!

biffa said:

Last unit I bought for the fold away reflector and bulb socket cost me £3!

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I was looking for units with fixed reflectors, it appears that the special effects guys on the original Starwars films used the handles from these flash units as things like 'droid callers' and 'communicators'. Consequently the cost of them can go through the roof.

Search ebay for droid callers and you will see what i mean.

biffa said:

traff said:

shoot in RAW so you can tweek the colour temp later

Click to expand...

But only if you shoot exclusively with blue OR clear bulbs, not both!

Click to expand...

I don't see how the choice of flash bulb affects the ability to alter the colour temp retrospectivly

traff said:

biffa said:

traff said:

shoot in RAW so you can tweak the colour temp later

Click to expand...

But only if you shoot exclusively with blue OR clear bulbs, not both!

Click to expand...

I don't see how the choice of flash bulb affects the ability to alter the colour temp retrospectively

Click to expand...

Clear bulbs promote one colour effect, blue bulbs will create another. Editing picture taken with only one type of bulb, ie all bulbs were blue, or all bulbs were clear will not be a problem.

If however you are using a mix of clear and blue bulbs in an individual shot, then the editing process becomes more complicated.

Cave Monkey said:

Clear bulbs promote one colour effect, blue bulbs will create another. Editing picture taken with only one type of bulb, ie all bulbs were blue, or all bulbs were clear will not be a problem.

If however you are using a mix of clear and blue bulbs in an individual shot, then the editing process becomes more complicated.

Click to expand...

Granted it becomes more complicated, however shooting in RAW gives you a far greater depth of control over your images than shooting jpeg.

traff said:

Cave Monkey said:

Clear bulbs promote one colour effect, blue bulbs will create another. Editing picture taken with only one type of bulb, ie all bulbs were blue, or all bulbs were clear will not be a problem.

If however you are using a mix of clear and blue bulbs in an individual shot, then the editing process becomes more complicated.

Click to expand...

Granted it becomes more complicated, however shooting in RAW gives you a far greater depth of control over your images than shooting jpeg.

Click to expand...

True but shifting the colour temperature in a raw editor only works for the whole picture. If you are using two light sources with different colour temperatures in one photo then shifting the colour temperature in a raw editor will change both light sources but the relationship between them will remain the same - i.e. they will remain different to one another.

I completely agree that shooting in Raw is best as you have greater control over the exposure, overall colour temperature and sharpness of the image. Furthermore, JPEGs are a lossy format which means that when you start editing and saving them, they progressively lose quality. I always shoot in raw. Once I've finished editing (and prior to applying any additional sharpening) I save as a Tiff file. I can then apply the relevant amount of sharpening to the image before either displaying it or printing it. Sharpening amounts differ depending on many factors such as size of the image or print, viewing distance, type of paper etc.

Andrew W said:

True but shifting the colour temperature in a raw editor only works for the whole picture. If you are using two light sources with different colour temperatures in one photo then shifting the colour temperature in a raw editor will change both light sources but the relationship between them will remain the same - i.e. they will remain different to one another.

Click to expand...

Save multiple copies with adjusted colour temps for the different areas then layer them up in photoshop and mask the bits you don't want. It might be interesting to try merge to HDR in CS2 (not sure about HDR - yet to try it)

To start of with i will be using the tiff format, the reason being i am using an Olympus c5060 with a 1gb card, and this format leaves the pixel editing options open without using as much space as a SHQ RAW file.

As i will not only be taking bulb pics on the photo trips i need to leave some space for happy snapping.
I dont have the camera to hand as i am typing this but i am sure i can only take about 40 pics at my book quality settings, and thats the one i will be using with the bulbs.

I would just like to say thanks to you all for your valid points and advice 

traff said:

Andrew W said:

True but shifting the colour temperature in a raw editor only works for the whole picture. If you are using two light sources with different colour temperatures in one photo then shifting the colour temperature in a raw editor will change both light sources but the relationship between them will remain the same - i.e. they will remain different to one another.

Click to expand...

Save multiple copies with adjusted colour temps for the different areas then layer them up in photoshop and mask the bits you don't want. It might be interesting to try merge to HDR in CS2 (not sure about HDR - yet to try it)

Click to expand...

This is back to that point earlier about it being overly complicated. Accurate masking isn't a quick process - especially if there are areas where different colour casts overlap. Not impossible but it would certainly be easier to use one colour temperature in the first place.

I once had a landscape photo I had taken using multiple Cokin grey graduated filters. It seems Cokin grey filters aren't actually neutral in colour and I ended up with quite a noticeable graduated purple colour cast in one part of the frame. Took me an age to correct.

As for the merge to HDR function - let me know if you figure out how this works. I tried using it on one raw file where I had processed multiple versions with exposure adjustments and it refused to work (said something about there being insufficient range of exposure info). I think you might need to take different frames with different exposures (rather than using one frame processed in different ways) but really don't know about this. Not sure how it would help with instances of differing colour temperatures though. I thought it was only used for merging differing exposure values.

Cave Monkey said:

Clear bulbs promote one colour effect, blue bulbs will create another. Editing picture taken with only one type of bulb, ie all bulbs were blue, or all bulbs were clear will not be a problem.

If however you are using a mix of clear and blue bulbs in an individual shot, then the editing process becomes more complicated.

Click to expand...

Or, if you do use a mixture of bulbs, consider making a monochrome picture.

Just though i would post some of the pics taken a while back on the first flashbulb trip. I know i was meant to be capturing water action shots, but as the water was not that high and there was all this nice vast passage to capture, i though what the hell.


Crystal Pool DYO - BM3 at 12, EF at 8.


Flabagasm (sp?) DYO - BAG1 at 1, EF at 7.


Grand Canyon DYO - BM3 at 12.


Big Chamber (?) OFD2 - BM3 at 12, BAG1 at 12.12, EF 4.

As I said before Wonderful Posing  Cave looks good as well  :tease:

Wot no cheesy grin! 

paulf said:

As I said before Wonderful Posing  Cave looks good as well  :tease:

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Great posing, notice how all the pics you are in holding the bulb, your bulk hides any glare... :bow:

Cave Monkey said:

paulf said:

As I said before Wonderful Posing  Cave looks good as well  :tease:

Click to expand...

Great posing, notice how all the pics you are in holding the bulb, your bulk hides any glare... :bow:

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It wasn't my Bulk  :ras:
It must have been my Eye's that adsorbed the Glare  :blink: that's all I could see even with my eyes closed 8)