Patent ID: 6873086

Claim:
A strobe apparatus comprising a discharge tube for flash, a capacitor for storing electrical energy for allowing said discharge tube to emit light, a charging circuit for charging electrical energy in said capacitor, a trigger circuit for generating a high-voltage signal for causing said discharge tube to discharge, and a boosting circuit including a piezoelectric transformer and shared as boosting means by said charging circuit and said trigger circuit, comprising: a piezoelectric transformer, as said piezoelectric transformer, having a rectangular shape in which one side in the longitudinal direction forms a primary-side region and the other side forms a secondary-side region, and comprising at least two types of output electrodes, in which a first type of the two types of output electrodes is an electrode formed in an end portion of the secondary-side region, and a second type of the two types of output electrodes is an intermediate electrode formed between this end portion and the primary-side region, wherein when said piezoelectric transformer is driven in a first resonance mode, a first output voltage can be extracted from a first output electrode of said two types of output electrodes, and, when said piezoelectric transformer is driven in a second resonance mode different from the first resonance mode, a second output voltage different from the first output voltage can be extracted from a second output electrode of said two types of output electrodes, and wherein said boosting circuit can be selectively used for said charging circuit or said trigger circuit by driving said piezoelectric transformer in a first or second resonance mode and extracting output voltages from said two types of output electrodes in said boosting circuit.