Flash photography used to be pretty wild 

Biggest missed opportunity in youtuber crossover history

Same, i even said it while watching hoping he was going to say it too

I was completely prepared for this to happen

Agreed!

I was disappointed we didn't get any Dan as well, even if it was only a 'Dan walking in from stage right with a good old British "What the bloody 'ell is goin' on 'ere then?" in the outtakes at the end.

Dan looks weird in this video

I love that my favorite RU-vid channels are collaborating together more and more. It’s a regular RU-vidr extended universe

Awesome 😲

How did you already watch the vid? its only been out for 14 minutes and the vid its self is 30 mins

@@brightsde3511 you get to watch videos a day or so early if you're a supporter on Patreon

Really cool insight, thanks for sharing!

That's almost 30 billion bulbs!

Came to make sure someone had already brought this magnificient moment to light. My favorite shot too.

​@@ardamilk7606I like the pun in your reply,

33:41 the box of crap is SUPER important.

Yeah. It makes me feel bad for Dan. When are other RU-vidrs going to need an almost-disposable english dude for some hazardous tests? He deserves some love, too!

How collabs should be

@@AviertjeDoesn't Dan still live in the UK? I was under the impression he travels to the states for a big filming batch periodically, and then the actual videos come out over time as they're edited. Must be awkward to sync that up with _other_ RU-vidrs as well.

It's mostly the million dollar camera

what other non slow mo guys videos has he been in?

I'm sure the engineers at Sylvania, GE, and Kodak would have killed for a camera like that during the development process...

1963: there's not enough light! 2023: there's too much light!

@@bobweiss8682that’s what I was thinking too. The people who made these did so without the benefit of being able to see what is happening. I’m sure they would love the footage and it makes me wonder if they would be surprised by anything or just say, yep that’s how I designed it

@@bobweiss8682 Some form of the tech probably existed but for governments/military, to expensive for them.

@@shaider1982 not single digit microsecond exposures

Grandma knew what she was doing. You were supposed to find that flash bulb.

Sympathetic what! Oh Lord! That sounds like a heck of a prank.

Several... several hundred... yeah I'd laugh if it were just the roommate, _maybe,_ that still sounds kinda dickish, but it sounds like this was done outside, on a porch, where it could scare neighbors and pets. At night.

The craziest part would be how silent it would be! Like, with a flash that big, you expect a massive bang as well, like a bomb just went off, but it's just a quick, silent flare out of nowhere!

@@micahphilson Exactly

It's a homemade (and a very expensive) flashbang

That's awesome. Shame your uncle didn't get to keep inventing things like he wanted. This is a very common feeling talented engineers have even today.

Wow, your uncle was a wizard?

Woah, you should into contact with Alec!

So which fulminate did they use?

This is such an American type of story that doesn't hardly exist today at all. All our innovation seems like it is just gone.

Yeah, I had the same thought. Yay. Definitely a fun collab to see! Thanks, both! 🎉📸

I had subtitles on. Thats when the "blindingly smooth jazz" starts.

I think Alec should have synchronized this part with an actual music.

I watch and listen to Gav’s other stuff through Rooster Teeth, and I want to say he’s mentioned enjoying watching Technology Connections before.

​@@isaacfortnercan confirm, I remember him mentioning it

😂That's brilliant! Reminds me of the story told during a Tom Scott video interviewing James Lovelock, the man who first invented a microwave (to revive frozen hamsters.... what a wild story! 🤯). The magnetron would generate a field with just the right wavelength to make the foil strips in pound notes act as antennas with similar destructive results!

When I was in the Army, we'd stick a fluorescent tube from one of the ceiling light fixtures in our field communications shelter, into the RF output of the transmitter, to quickly check, if it was transmitting any power. "Field Expediency".

Certain brands of automatic garage door openers really don't like the AN/SPQ9 on our destroyer, not that the Navy ever admits anything at san diego...

And all get enough rads?

​@@jozefbaniaIt's relatively low frequency electro magnetic radiation so the worst it can do is cook you like a hotdog

i see some people using these to this day

*I* used them - have boxes of pics I took with an old Kodak w the Magicubes!!

I remember being sent to the local rite-aid to buy them in the middle of a party. I was a kid in the 70s when these things were at their peak. But they died very quickly. I had no idea these started in 65. I thought they were much older. By 1980 they were gone.

Me too - born in 1969, played with the used Magicubes from my parents’ cameras as a kid, and then my first camera in 1980 was a Kodak that both took 110 film cassettes and had a built-in electric flash that slid open and shut, so you replaced batteries instead of the bulb. They also used a 16mm film camera for home movies and the light for that was also as bright as the sun, it seemed, so all those indoor home movies have us kids squinting and holding up hands against the light. I also half-remember all the smells involved with the Magicubes and the film camera and playing the movies. You don’t get those with phones…

@@malinicula797 I remember seeing a camera with a cube stick on it in about 1973.

As soon as Alec showed the mechanism I wondered to myself if they could go off if someone dropped them. So that's a yes then. It's like a ninja smoke bomb haha.

Makes one wonder how the store dealt with customer complaint that a new box were full of blown bulbs because it got dropped?

@@Gractus More like a ninja flashbang...

​@@Fan-lq6uvHell, I'd be slightly concerned about the amount of light generated by a potential 12 flashes going off *simultaneously,* causing the cardboard package to ignite from all the heat! (... and incase anyone wants to think that's _not_ possible, just remember what the sun + a magnifying glass can do 😅)

@@Fan-lq6uv Come to think of it, I wouldn't want to be the USPS worker handling those.

1:52 I had the same reaction! It was a pleasant and nostalgic brain tickle.

Yes I remember that charging the capacitor whine as I got a huge electric shock taking one apart poking one with metal screwdriver as a kid....hurts like hell, got more kick than any 240v shock I've ever hqd

@@foxxy46213 i did the same with a disposable camera not once, but twice as a kid xD

@@sunnyokapi yep same..had to poke it twice as I thought how can 3v zap like that

I remember taking one apart as a kid. It was a newer camera that used xenon flash tubes. I never got shocked. However, I did get an unpleasant surprise when something shorted the capacitor and made a nice little fireworks display@@foxxy46213

Exactly my thought, it was such an amazing ending, with a so smooth and heartful transition, the music slowly creeping in. Just perfect!

I want to get rid of the feeling I got upon hearing him say "slow mo guy" instead of "one of the slow mo guys" - its daneraser

1:22 ​@@MrBattlecharge Xxx

same

Around 3mins in I was literally drafting a comment in my head about how it would be so cool to see these flashes go off in slow motion, and of course a collab with Gav (and/or Dan) came instantly to mind. Seconds later I was grinning ear to ear, cursing myself for ever doubting Alec 😅😅😅

They should have just called Michael Bay’s cameraman and asked him how he got those slo-mo flashbulb shots in “Pearl Harbor”. That’s the movie that taught me that cameras were a lot more explodey back in the day.

That and the recent "shaped charge" video, yes.

​@@darrennew8211 There also was a video about actual thunderbolts.

Being 41 myself, I find it amazing just how many things that used to be parts of my everyday life have become ancient relics of a bygone era…seeing younger generations coming along and rediscovering these relics…and really deep diving into them like Alec does, just brings a smile to my face every time… It’s why I’m a subscriber…☺️

Give us a break. 😆 I'm nineteen. Flip phones have been around longer than me. This, to me, is incredible.

i love old things to the point where i want to someday collect old hardware. my current stock of old hardware is a commodore64, ti99a4, and an original atari (which is sadly hit or miss when it comes to working). I'm 19 and id absolutely love to own more hardware, rarer hardware from back in ye olde days

As an 18 year old, I do not know how to use photoshop, but I can shoot, develop, and print large format.

Lol. I'm 38 and i work with guys who are mostly around your age. I'm starting to embrace being the old guy. I got my first flip phone in 2004 when i was 18. Imagine a 19 year old in 20 years saying the iphone is older than them. 😂 @blakksheep736

Thank you for that. I was hoping he might talk about what it was for but he didn't. I was wondering a out it

I remember the commercials advising that if the blue dot was black it was a sure way to know the bulb was spent (but they used much smoother language). I thought it was ridiculous since every bulb that fired melted almost all the way through the shield.

blue dot, in sealed bulb

Why would it explode? If it's leaked wouldn't it be less likely to explode? It goes from full Oxygen environment to atmosphere

@@16vSciroccoboi because it's a LOW PRESSURE oxygen rich atmosphere, which is BELOW ambient atmospheric pressure. Being AT atmospheric pressure could potentially mean there's more oxygen inside than intended for a controlled reaction.

what do you mean by "post down"?

@@orangejuliaathe part with the fulminant

As a kid, I think possibly they didn't figure out I needed glasses yet at that point, I thought the bulb was solid glass with a solid metal post sticking into it. I didn't realize it was hollow, and that the "post" was also hollow and contained a fulminate of some sort.

@@NoahErickson ohhh i thought you meant post as in like after, thanks for the explanation

Yes, I used to do the same. I would even heat the bulb to remove the film, so it would literally explode. Yes, it's a wonder I lived to the ripe old age I am now, and with all my fingers!

I miss that. Photographs were much more precious than today. They meant so much more. I've been careful to look after all my old snaps from the early 80's.

I waited the whole video for this joke!

Absolutely!!

I was more disappointed at the absence of "the magic of having four of them!" when introducing the cubes.

I mean. Do we really want Alec to go to prison for taking apart a slow-mo guy?

@@ranolden9717 excellent point

alec jumpscare

I know right?!?! xD

A true mad scientist.

It's like the manic grin in the reflection on the toaster.....

I never fail to learn something on this channel. 😛

I think I once did the math to find than an indoor area that I thought had fantastic lighting was still something like 10 stops dimmer than it was outside, an that might have been the shade. The conscious side of the brain just refuses to believe how much the visual side of the brain is lying to it.

Is it really though? How consistent is the burn and produced light between individual flash bulbs? How consistent is each shot on a cube, how consistent are cubes amongst each other?

​@@0neDoomedSpaceMarineProbably more consistent than the steel core ammo we're outshooting you with

@@asacreglow6422 ??? outta pocket behavior

I was repeating that time in my head until the end of the video. Such a weird thing to think of all that went into that photo getting made.

surprised Alec didn’t use it as the thumbnail 😂

I haven't laughed so hard in at least a decade 😂😂😂

🤪

That shot would be right at home in the montage of a mad scientist working just before "IT's ALIVE!"

“Brilliant” in _both_ senses of the word! ;)

It's like taking a test and getting every answer wrong.

I see what you did there...

The issue with longer lasting ones is that they only last so long if you're not turning it on or off constantly. It practically needs to stay on to last long.

Uno revers card hahaha

He nearly got me with that one, right as I was taking a drink.

Right? I NEED a 4k wallpaper of that

I didn’t think it was even real for far too long

It was gorgeous. Reminds me of early CG art from the 90s.

Even more beautiful than the sequence at 30:47?

Agreed, the various clips were captivating, some of the best slow-mo footage I've watched. It reminds me of those movie reels from the Space Shuttle liftoff pad ("Best of the Best").

I asked for it... don't remember in what context, but i asked.

When he said I’ll need some sort of slo mo guy I was expecting it to just be a joke

I remember Gav mentioning on a podcast a while back that he is a fan of Alec's channel and finally we have this

Yep. That's it. I don't have to leave my obligatory Patreon comment now. This one beats anything I could possibly come up with.

​@@newqyou're nothing in comparison

​@@quantumblur_3145 what even is your Comment?

@@FFKonoko I could ask the same thing about what I replied to.

My thoughts exactly

Might need to be the new channel profile picture

Actually, I found the burn of the broken tube at 28:30 rather unexpected...

The Big Bang

Stupid idea: Make each frame of this shot a picture and set it as a Desktop Wallpaper slideshow where it'll get brighter each hour

That had me rolling xD

That's one thing I don't remember packing ...

hobbies in a nut shell

Is he wrong, though? 😛

I always carry a box of crap with me. I'm relatively confident in my ability to acquire an adequate supply over time, but I never know when I might not be able to produce the immediately required amount on demand....

The good ol days before liability lawsuits

I did not know that. But how did flashbulbs accidentally go off in their pockets unless they had pockets big enough to carry pre-loaded flash units with the power source connected? Only the Magicubes had self-powered detonators. Flash bulbs and regular Flashcubes needed an external power source.

@@mar4kl Static charge from wool fabric.

Can you please source this? I can't find anything talking about that

@@vwestlife, wow, I never would have thought of that (and apparently they didn't, either😬), but it makes sense.

Funny seeing you here

It really is beautiful

reminds me of christmas lights instantly

I really thought grandma would be waving at me from the light.

That was beautiful!

Was this the Montoursville PA Sylvania plant? They made proximity fuses for WWII, then radio tubes, then light bulbs and flashcubes.

@@m1goodwin what a set of things that sound totaly unconnected but when you think about it have a lot in common

Amazing thing was Kodak engineer invented the digital camera in the 1970's but they were never a leader there. I guess when your business model is selling film you don't introduce a product to undermine it. They are a shell of their former selves today post-bankruptcy but still supplying film, chemicals etc.

You don't only feel, you are (and so do I by the way) I remember my mum getting angry after me just because I took fun by triggering some electric type cube with a 4,5V battery !

Mine watched in puzzlement @@lapub.

I remember the smell!

It hurt when the slow mo guy said "I've never even heard of that" about a MagiCube.

@@kimchristensen3727 I think I saw a flashcube once in an older episode of The Simpsons. Gotta say, while I never saw these things IRL in all my 31 years, I think their engineering is very clever and cool.

I think this is the biggest difference between film and digital: when we used film we just waited for the best moments and opportunities to take a picture, it was something really special, from a moment you really want to save for your whole life. Film and development were expensive and limited, so we didn't want to waste poses. Then digital came and photos became something easy, unlimited and trivial.

@@Subiromba while true, and i lived as such, i dont disagree with modern times, my daughter (5yrs) just took , i want to say abut 30 photos on her little digital camera just this afternoon, it has a thermal printer and she printed off 10 of them . had I had that opportunity as a child id have a lot more memories saved of dens projects and life in general.. hopefully she appreciates im collecting all these photos , and perhaps not her adolescence, but adulthood she can look back on them!

@@denisohbrien Still, today we tend to think that most people can afford a printer but most of all, the ink cartridges. It's not the case. The business model remains the same. Sell them one thing for cheap, a thing that requires regular use items that will become your main sources of incoming revenues. Anyway, I'll go get my cup of Nespresso freshly prepared with the help of Alexa and watch a poorly rated film, an Amazon Prime Exclusivity, on my Fire TV.

@@Subiromba Phone cameras are often not that great, and photography remains a skill, thus why professional photographers never went away.

was looking for this

That's EVERYONE'S favorite shot

54yo photographer here who never got to use the explody ones, because fancy-schmancy xenon tubes were already around. :)

@@stamasd8500 60 year old here whose first camera was a 126 used Magicubes. Once used I dismantled a few but never worked out how they worked. By the late 1970s I upgraded / downgraded to a 110 with a built in Xenon Flash. I would have to dig it out but think it used four AAA batteries to operate it.

@@stamasd8500 See if you can scrounge up an old cheap one like in the video, and then a couple of cubes, see what it's like to use these. Not cutting edge anymore, but to make a comparison, it's still fun to shoot an old fashioned musket, even though they're antique technology. That they're such a different experience to modern guns makes them novel and interesting to try, some consider them far more fun and enjoyable.

SAME Him talking about slow mo I was like "no way it's Gav", then he said "slow mo guy" and I absolutely lost it haha

My smile was so big I almost swallowed my own ears.

Same here it was so delightful!

The dark cloth ("blanket") is mainly not to protect the photographer but to keep any external light out to allow him to see the rather dim (and upside down and mirrored) image on the ground glass focusing screen to focus and compose the shot. When the composing and focusing is done the photographer would put a film or plate in a light tight holder in place either replacing the ground glass or moving it back so the film will be in the same plane. He would then close the shutter or on very early cameras put on the lens cover, remove the dark slide (a light tight piece of sheet metal covering the film when the holder is out of the camera) from the film/plate holder, open the shutter or remove the lens cover (a hat or something similar could also be used), fire the flash, close the shutter/lens cover, replace the dark slide and remove the holder. Photographer taking a picture while being under the dark cloth is a modern misconception, usually they were (and still are, one of my hobbies is large format photography so I have done "the dance" many times myself) outside of the dark cloth at the side of the camera when actually taking the photograph as they would not see anything at that stage anyway with the film taking the place of the focusing screen. You don't want to be touching the camera during the exposure so you'll stand clear of it.

I ain't reading all'at 🙏💀

@@TryAlex23 it's so weird to me that some people seem proud of being functionally illiterate, so they actually brag about it.

@@railgap ok

@@TryAlex23you gotta admit, the “I ain’t reading all that” threshold has gone down from like 10+ paragraphs to just 2. Heck, one of them doesn’t even fill my phone screen and it’s a pretty small phone.

Hot but not as hot as the 6500K for a particular "illuminant". I wondered how a photo flash was going to equal the sun's 4watts per square metre arriving on Earth.

also the zirkonium dioxide is like 5 times denser than oxygen, so as it burns up from the inside out it probably creates a low pressure zone that sucks in the surrounding gas

@@20chocsaday At sea level full sunlight is about 1000W/m^2, not 4W/m^2. But the key is that you don't have to illuminate the entire Earth. To illuminate 10 square meters to an equivalent level you need 10 kW. If you do that for the time that a flash lasts (around a thousandth of a second) the energy needed is only 10 J. That's not all that much.

I was wondering about this unaddressed point in the video, because the blobs are VERY clearly *producing* significant amounts of gas as they burn, getting larger and popping in the weightlessness of freefall in exactly the same way as the molten blobs of Nighthawkinlight's senko hanabi fireworks, or astronaut Don Pettit's Alka Seltzer in water blob experiment on the space station. thx.

Thought you could remember gun powder flash granddad! I'm same age..

Ah yes...... memories of melted flesh as you tried to change your flashbulb too quickly before it cooled!

Im older than you, but the age ratio just keeps getting smaller. You never really catch up though.

@@clayz1It's like Xeno's Paradox.

@@BertGrink Like if you have two boats you need a pair of docs?

I wonder how much in original money was spent making this episode

What annoyed me about both my Magicube cameras was invariably, when inserting the flash unit, one would go off just by inserting. Not sure if it was my 4-7 year old fumbling, or a design fault. The flash sticks (not sure if that had a catchy name, but they had like 10 bulbs per stick), which used electricity, avoided this problem.

@@tjncooke Oh yeah -- my aunt had one of those cameras that used the flash stick (whatever it was called). I'd forgotten about that. They were definitely better than the MagiCubes, no doubt. I never had a MagiCube go off by accident, not that I can remember anyway. But I can totally see how it could happen -- just get anything up inside there, poke that wire, and **poof!** It'd probably have scared the shit out of me, had I done it. 😂

That would be a pretty funny mistake for sure. I’m a Navy photographer currently our night vision camera suffers from serious radar interference on the O10 we’re looking to do some test runs with aluminum foil shielding soon to see if we can’t fix the problem ourselves.

On the other hand that's a mistake that only the brightest people would make....

Tangential fun fact: most flashlights that take 3 AAAs in those little round holders dont even have current limiting resistors in them to protect the LEDs. They rely on the relatively slow chemical reaction to limit the current available to the LED array. Also, if you want a brighter light, just pop a lithium battery in! I use a 14mm by 48mm (50mm including button contact on top...whatever that translates to in battery dimensions....14480? 14500?) harvested from a cheap wireless mouse that is the perfect length, and some spacer rings cut from a paper towel tube to keep it centered. ....though I do recommend adding a resistor if you go that route as you can burn out the LEDs a lot faster with the kinds of current a lithium battery can instantaneously provide....

I mean it is kind of pointless, a decent rechargeable flashlight with replaceable lithium battery can be had for 10 dollars if you know what to look for.@@mandi8345

@@mandi8345your cheap wireless mouse had a built-in lithium battery? all wireless mice I seen have slot for AA battery

@@mandi8345 I discovered it the bad way. I bought a quite bright used LED underwater flashlight with alkaline batteries inside (~10W) without manual(!). Then I changed to NiMh batteries and it didn't last long because it just burned up the LED which was directly connected to the batteries. No electronics, no resistor. Older flashlights and cameras with flashlights sometimes had a warning in the manual that you MUST NOT use rechargable batteries.

As an early entrant for the Darwin Award, I remember holding them right up to my eye and setting them off. Trippy phosphenes - can’t believe I didn’t permanently damage or lose my eyesight.

@@awgn70 They used to make a self-defense tool that was a curved mirror you could plug a magic cube into. Point it at your attacker and give it a squeeze, and it set off all four at once, projecting it into bad-guy's face. Hope there's only one of them.

I had forgotten about those 10 bulb strips. And yes - they did get awfully hot.

The flash gun charge cycle noise was an iconic sound of my childhood.

Yeah very nostalgic to see these again, beautiful pieces of tech.

I also have one of those bars for a Polaroid 2000. What I don't really understand is how the camera (or the bar itself) knows what bulb is set to fire, since there are five on each side?

Would you say that the Magicube greatly increased camera use by people? Or say, caused EXPLOSIVE growth?

For a while I couldn't think of what it reminded me of. Then it came to me: the ignition of the rocket engines of the Saturn 5 for Apollo.

Thanks for that suggestion, looks identical!

yes, it seems fairly clear that the beads here only appear after heating ... I was struggling to remember which channel I'd seen it on before, Periodic Videos is the one!

THANK YOU! I couldn't remember where I saw this phenomenon.

Molybdenum wire does that. The oxide has a lower melting temperature than the metal. That would make it oxidize quickly and produce extra heat. It might be molybdenum wire.

That is very interesting!!

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one

Also a lot of ELEGANCE in those mechanisms. Getting slide film (positive image) in a photochemical structure which is fundamentally creating a negative image is even more interesting. Also, you can develop slide film as a negative and get a negative image just like as with traditional negative film, but with a slightly different color balance (which would be corrected for in the printing dark room, because the slide film base is clear, whereas film made to produce negatives is built on an orange base, so printing negative-developed slide film requires dialing in the LOT of orange before it's close to the right filtration to get a proper-looking positive print)

Very neat things indeed, such interesting designs and problem solving! Also re @akulkis I really liked cross-processing techniques. My friend is trying to build a darkroom in their new home. I'm definitely looking forward to playing with dark room processing techniques again!

Yes! I remember this as well, though I had forgotten that it was two-sided. I always wanted to know the same thing: how was it designed such that only the *next* unused bulb would be fired? I wonder if it was mechanical like the Magicube or some kind of electrical circuit cleverness.

It's 2024, we have the Internet. I did a quick search for Flip-flash and got the answers. The thermal events disconnect the spent bulb and wire in the next. It's easy enough to break a circuit with heat but making a connection is more interesting. It's described in patent US3458270A.

I'd forgotten about these, but now remember after reading your description.

We had those for our Polaroid! Wasn't the number of flashes in the stick different from the number of photos in the pack of film?

@@j_taylor It was definitely different from the number of exposures in a 110 film cartridge, which I recall being the standard 12 or 24 exposures. But of course, you didn't always want to use the flash, so they probably weren't going to match up anyway.