Open Camera Electric Shock?

Question

Okay I tried to open my roll camera you buy at like walmart for like 5 bucks and then it shocked me when i put flash on and touched the little spikes... it diddn't feel like the novelty toys of like a shock hand buzzer... it was much worse and now i got a blister on my thumb... can you tell me what i did? and now the flash wont work... but i used all the film... so can you tell me what happened?

Answer 1

Congratulations. You have now learned why they print those Warnings with the lighting bolt icon telling you to not open the camera yourself due to the possibility of electrical shock.

Hope your thumb heals quickly.

Answer 2

The way an electronic flash works is that when it is triggered a sudden, intensive burst of high voltage electricity is blasted through a gas filled tube. This ionizes the gas and causes that brilliant flash of light.

The problem is accumulating that blast of energy. This is accompilshed by loading up a gadget called a capacitor which I guess you can imagine as a fuel tank to hold electricity. That's why there is usually a delay after you take a flash picture, the capacitor has to be reloaded before you can take the next flash picture.

Now a capacitor really is like a fuel tank, it stores electricity and it can store it for a very long time. There is some leakage but not much, often less in fact than you get with rechargeable batteries.

When you opened the camera those spikes you touched were electrical contacts and you probably shorted them out (completed the circuit) which caused the electricity to flow. Now usually our skin has a degree of resistance to electrical flow but there is no resistance to the high voltages and power levels used by a flash. Since you likely touched both contacts, you became a circuit and all that intense energy flowed through your finger instead of the flash.

Considering the power levels in a typical flash, you most likely also received a burn from that energy release. So that's what caused the blister.

Finally, since the current flowed through you instead of through whatever path it was supposed to follow, it's quite likely that you burned something out in the flash circuit and as a result the flash now doesn't work.

There is a lesson here too that you need to remember. Many electrical devices have capacitors because the capacitors are sometimes used like batteries to store power until it's needed. Unlike batteries, they don't take long to charge and when they're triggered they can release their energy incredibly fast and intensely.

Just because you unplug an electronic device does not mean that it's safe to touch. Anything that has a capacitor in it can contniue to give you a powerful shock if you touch the right electrical contacts.

Thankfully those risks are a lot less these days than in the past. Most electronic devices work on very low voltages that can't penetrate our skin but there is still the odd one like the electronic flashes which carry significant power levels. In fact you're lucky that this was a cheap little camera, had you openned a professional flash unit you'd have done yourself far worse damage, they operate at much higher power levels.

Now that doesn't mean you should never take something apart to see what's inside, it simply means you have to be careful and you have to be prepared to no longer use the thing you're taking apart. Electronic things need to be shorted out to be safe. That means touch electrical contacts with a screwdriver instead of your finger so that the current flows through that instead of you. Once you've shorted the device it's then safe to handle. But remember, in the process of releasing all that energy there's a chance that something else will burn out too so only take apart things you never intend to use again. What you can also do is wear rubber gloves which will insulate you better. In most cases they will keep you safe too but don't count on it. If you take apart an old traditional television the voltages in that are high enough to penetrate the rubber gloves too.

I hope this helps you understand what happened.

Answer 3

On camera flash units have a lot of juice in them because they store them in capacitors. Even when you take out the battery from the camera, the capacitors hold the electricity, so you can give you a pretty strong shock.

By doing this, you probably shorted out the flash circuit.