Photoflash/Strobe capacitors

[Buriedcode]

I have revisited a project from my (somewhat wasted) youth involving the main component of strobes, flash, 'coilguns' and at the larger end, can crushing, projects.

Now I'm much more familiar with electronics, and the sting of high voltage I thought I would build a 'better' charger for large medium voltage cap banks, starting with a 12V powered xenon strobe.  I already have a couple of boards off ebay, no doubt removed from equipment, that really are just larger versions of those found in the flash circuits of disposable cameras (12V/0.5A in, 120uF 330V cap, probably only charges to 200V, 1Hz).

By 'better' I mean having having some form of control over the power draw, and of course, accurately detecting the cap voltage to stop charge and/or trigger an SCR/trigger transformer for xenon.  That'll pretty much just be a custom made flyback transformer, driven by a 555, MOSFET with some  peak current limiting.  I'll post if anyone is interested, but its hardly 'awesome'.

Although I do have a couple of disposable camera circuits, their caps are only 50uF and I am having trouble sourcing 100-400uF/350V caps in the UK.  I *could* just buy up a 470uF/400V cap from rapid/farnell, but of course these were not designed for the heavy, repetitive discharge of a strobe, and I've seen a cap explode before, the smell was *not* nice.  Also, many strobes do not need a high capacitance really, the largest I've seen on a strobe (that was meant for 2Hz) was 80uF, and I'm planning on doing 'experiments' (ie: all the sad coilgun and Lorentz stuff that I am ashamed of) for the 30-50J range.  So 150uF - 400uF, in series/parallel would be ideal, but as this is a half hearted thing, I'm not willing to pay £20 shipping.

Any ideas?