When is the electrical field of a camera flash the strongest?

  • Thread starter Thread starter dracodvana
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dracodvana

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Writing a story where I can fudge the science a bit, but I wanted to get this correct. I'm using a camera flash in the story and (without getting into too much detail) need to know when the electrical field around the thing would be the strongest.

The light charges, then expends the energy. It would seem that the field would peak when the charge was expended, but I'm not strong enough in this science to be certain; it might be most powerful when the charge is at its peak, *before* the light goes off.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance for your attention.
 
There are two different electric fields involved.
One is the electrical field in the capacitor which stores energy prior to the flash. It is pumped up by a voltage multiplier circuit until it reaches the designed voltage, which is the voltage at which the capacitor stores the amount of energy needed for the flash. It stays at this high level until the flash is triggered.
The other field is that around the conductors. It is highest at the instant of triggering and rapidly declines to near zero as the charge is in the capacitor is dissipated.
If the flash is the type where a primary coil is normally charged and then is collapsed at triggering to generate a current in a secondary coil, then the field is high up until the point at which it is triggered. It is the collapsing field, which is always smaller than the primary field, which generates the current in the flash.
 
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