Lighting a high school gym doesn't have to be expensive

Well it's bball season and so I thought I'd put up a post on how to make my cheapo gym strobe kit.  I use Vivitar 285's for my kit, they're inexpensive and powerful, but best of all they will work with a generic 6v lead acid rechargeable battery, no fancy electronics to fry.  I wouldn't hook up this battery to a canon or nikon flash for the simple reason I just don't know where the positive and negatives are in the battery compartment.  I buy the old version of the vivitar's, the new ones they sell at BHphoto have had issues.  I try not to pay more than $60.00.  Other options are sunpak flashes or some of the new chinese flashes discussed here on Strobist.  I have no experience with any flash other than the old Vivitars that I own, so I cannot recommend anything else.  How can you tell what 285 you have, old or new?  Look at the bottom of the flash, it will say made in china or made in japan if it's one of the original Vivitar's, the new ones don't say anything. I have two "china" and two "japan" units.

The Vivitars have a battery insert that makes a great template for the fake battery, I just cut out a wood block to fit the space and use screws to make the contacts.  The cable is lamp cord (18 gauge or 16 gauge) that you can buy by the foot at any hardware store. I actually have reels of this stuff for wiring up my arena strobes.

The other great thing about this insert or fake battery is that you cannot put it in the flash wrong.  It will only go in one way.  Check out this blog for another way to make the fake battery using the Vivitar battery insert.

The + and - signs are pretty self explanatory.  Just be sure you have the same thing on the other end, I end up marking one side with black marker to make sure I don't get the two confused at the battery end.

I found the connectors at Radio Shack, I think they are for RC cars.  You can also just use the slide on connectors directly to the battery like I have it in the first photo.   I like the black and red wires that the RC car connector uses, no chance of screwing up the polarity. 

The batteries can be found at BatteriesPlus or your neighborhood electronics store (think RC cars or other hobbyist electronics), any 6v Lead acid rechargeable will work, keep the amps at 4.5 to 5.   To charge them you can use a special wall wart charger like this....

This will set you back about $30.00 or you can go to your local auto parts store and pick up a motorcycle battery charger for around $20.00.

 

To see how this system works, check out the photos in this article.

For an article on how to light a high school gym with small flashes, someone grabbed the tutorial from Maxpreps website and put a .pdf on their website........here's the link