potholer said:As far as bulk is concerned, I guess the nice strobing flashguns aren't tiny, but on the other hand, someone may want to carry one anyway for shots where a flash is needed for freezing action, so how much extra bulk would be involved could vary quite a bit with the situation.
My flashguns (which have the strobe mode) are pretty normal sized for bounce heads (around 5 inches long). I can get two of them with fireflies into a peli 1150 case. There isn't any more bulk than I would normally take on a cave photography trip. The downside is that they aren't particularly cheap though I imagine there are probably cheaper options on the market.
footleg said:potholer said:I'd assume that if the RALF concept worked at all for smoothing out water with a lowish number of flashguns (presumably no more than 6-8 at most?), 32 or 64 flashes would do a pretty good job.
But would probably be bigger and far less practical than using a normal bright light (i.e. one that stays on as long as the battery is connected). A car headlight bulb with a diffuser for example.
As for practicality - certainly the SB800 can be programmed to fire the desired number of flashes over the desired period in manual mode such that with a firefly it would fire just as easily as any other short flash. Not sure about the SB600. I know it can fire as a strobe but not sure if it needs extra hardware on the camera to do so - need to play around with it. You might get better results with a car headlight but I wouldn't have thought it would be more practical to use or carry.