Overclocking Speedlights

This is cool. With Nikon/Canon/etc. speedlights which utilize this particular NEC processor, you can (very slowly, and at your own peril, and leaving your warranty at home) use a power on/off sequence to boost the watt-second power of the speedlight from about 60ws to 8-10 times that power. How do you know when you pushed it too far? The smell of melted plastic. Oh, and don't look into the light.

Here's the strobist post and Flickr page.

Not that I think I'd use this much, but in specific scenarios, and when there's enough time to painstakingly charge up the strobe(s), this is an interesting option for the toolbox. Bigger strobes of course can generate this amount of light easily, it's just amazing that you can coax these little strobes to do something like this.

It's great to start off the first day of April with news like this. This is going to be a good month.