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Home made TTL-macro flash unit for the Olympus Camedia 5050 Zoom

by Jens Birch
birchmail

 
Figure 1. A" Christmas-cactus" flower. One of the first pictures taken with the flash. The flower isabout 4 cm long. (Taken with f/8, and a close-up lens, image contast and color saturation has been enhanced in a photo editor.) See more example images: bottle cap and hot-shoe cover.


The flash is based on optical fibers which conducts the light from the internal flash of the camera down to the subject, 3-50 cm from the lens. If the macro mode or normal mode with a close-up lens is used, the camera's TTL-system will automatically portion the amount of light needed for a good exposure. independent of the aperture/shutter setting. (It will not work in super macro mode.)


Fig. 2. Here are the main parts; 1 mm-diameter optical fibers, a piece of PVC plastic which has been cut out to fit around the lens housing with holes to fix six fibers in front of the built in flash and one in front of the autofocus diode. It has cut-outs for the viewfinder and the remote control detector. (A template made from transparent plastic foil is also shown.) A transparant PMMA plastic ring with holes to hold the ends of the fibers in a direction towards the subject. It has two different set of holes, one set points the fibers at a focal point 5 cm in front of the ring and one set pointing the fibers parallel to the optical axis of the lens.



Fig. 3. Here is the device mounted with four 80 mm long screws. The distance from the camera can be adjusted on these screws. Some fibers are mounted to point at the 5 cm focus distance and others are mounted to point straight out. In practice this means that good illumination can be achieved from 3 cm to 50 cm.



Fig. 4. "Self portrait" of the camera with the device mounted on the camera.



Fig. 5. Here you can see the flash in action through a mirror (TTL is on).


Fig. 6. Here is a bottle cap. I have not made any cropping or post processing of the image other than resizing to 800x600.


Here is the cover for the hot-shoe on the C5050. No post processing or cropping, only resized to 800x600.

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