Twice during each performance of the University of Toledo’s production of The Actor’s Nightmare, a recorded voice sternly warned the audience that the taking of pictures was not permitted. Those warnings were immediately followed by a sequence of flashes — from cameras hidden on the set and triggered remotely. Toledo student Lino Stavole’s suggestion that we might be able to use Kodak’s “throw-away” cameras for the flash effects was a gold mine! The tiny, inexpensive Kodak Fun Flashm has great potential for achieving many types of flash effects.

FIGURE 1: FRONT VIEW OF KODAK’S FUN FLASH®, CASE REMOVED

After prying a Fun Flash® apart, we found it needed only the two modifications illustrated above. First, to achieve remote firing, we terminated the strobe’s trigger-circuit leads in a male mic-cable connector. We plugged this connector into one end of a 25′ cable, whose other end terminated in a normal-open pushbutton. Second, having decided we would remove the battery between uses, we soldered the camera’s spring-steel charging contact down. (We could certainly have installed a remote switch instead.) With that, the unit was ready for installation and use. We found that the unit worked reliably with trigger cables up to 40′ long and that, with a good battery, capacitor charging took only about 10 seconds. Not bad for a $20 investment!