I would appreciate help making a device I can mount on my camera to sense the
flash, and wire it to an old technology underwater strobe to trigger it like a
camera sync. would normally do. Background: I do a lot of underwater
photography with 35mm film cameras with a direct wired flash strobe for
lighting. I would like to use it on my digital camera, but there is no sync.
connector provided for external flash units, like on my 35mm cameras. So, I
would like to build a small, simple circuit that would sense the flash output
from the digital camera flash and provide a momentary "closed circuit" for the
contacts on my external flash strobe. For packaging, the smaller the better.
Or is there something already on the market I can adapt?
Thanks in advance for any help.

unless you have some kind of remote connector or can put in a remote
contact from your exposure switch i don't think using a light sensor
to trigger your remote flash is going to work because of the time involved.
by the time your remote flash produces light the camera most likely
is going to ignore its effects..
in short you won't get much better than what you have now.
i think if you did some surgery on your camera you can export a cable
from the little micro switch to run the remote flash.


WbSearch wrote:

I would appreciate help making a device I can mount on my camera to sense the
flash, and wire it to an old technology underwater strobe to trigger it like a
camera sync. would normally do. Background: I do a lot of underwater
photography with 35mm film cameras with a direct wired flash strobe for
lighting. I would like to use it on my digital camera, but there is no sync.
connector provided for external flash units, like on my 35mm cameras. So, I
would like to build a small, simple circuit that would sense the flash output
from the digital camera flash and provide a momentary "closed circuit" for the
contacts on my external flash strobe. For packaging, the smaller the better.
Or is there something already on the market I can adapt?
Thanks in advance for any help.

So if I understand you, the problem is flash delay caused by the sensor
circuit?. I do use a remote sensor on one of my strobes now, but it is
internal to the strobe and triggered by a different underwater strobe which is
much more powerful than the camera flash. Also, I can set the shutter speed on
the camera to a lower value like I do on the film camera. Am I on the wrong
track?
I thought I had seen a remote sensor some years ago that mounted on the hotshoe
base of a land flash. It sensed another flash and triggered the slave one thru
the hot shoe like a camera would. If I could remember where I saw that one, I
could disect it for the circuit components. As I remember there weren't any
batteries, just a photo type sensor and a transistor or SCR?