 Lynsey Lund |
Old School Light Meter and Flash
Thanks in advance!
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John H. Siskin |
Hi Lynsey, The flash is a Vivitar 285. Vivitar is still in the photo business. The flash is still available. There are distance ranges in which it can work automatically. It should work well with your Nikon. The meter is a version of the Luna-Pro. These were fine meters in their day, but the meter is your camera is far superior for measuring continuous light sources. For working with strobes the proof image and the histogram together are better than the strobe meters were. If you are working with film a meter still has some application. This meter used the PX-13 battery which is hard to get.
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Lynsey Lund |
Thanks John. I found a manual online finally for a newer version of the flash...so hopefully that will help with figuring out the settings. My parents picked up some hotshoe attachments to get it off camera, but I'm wondering once its off camera what do I do with it? Do I need a frame thing to attach it to my camera? Is there I way I can set it up on my xtra tripod? (I saw that done once and it was great). I hope I can get a charger/power supply for it, it seems to have gotten lost over the years. Thanks for the info on the light meter too, I will just add it to the collection because its fun and stick with my in-camera metering :)
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John H. Siskin |
Hi Lynsey, There are difficulties in syncing this strobe to a camera that uses dedicated flash. The big problem is that with a standard slave the strobe will go off too soon because the dedicated strobe uses a pre-flash for exposure and focus. One type of unit will ignore the pre-flash, but is too expensive. Alternatively, you can use an inexpensive radio slave from eBay, but you will have to plug the sender into the pc socket (there is a cord for this) if you want to use it with a dedicated flash. If you want to use just this unit, the radio slave would be fine. Here is a link to an article on strobe sync: www.siskinphoto.com/magazine/zpdf/sync.pdf By the way, it normally uses just regular AA batteries. Thanks,
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Kathryn Wesserling |
Lyndsey - I was thrilled to discover that my Dad's old Vivitar from his Minolta worked on my Rebel XT. Luckily, while searching for an online manual, I discovered a number of warnings that you could ruin your dSLR by using the old flash units (has to do with the sync info that John writes about.) I was too scared to continue to try using it after reading all the warnings.
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John H. Siskin |
Kathy, You could use your Vivitar off camera with a radio slave, no worries about sync voltage there. There are cheap radio slaves at eBay. Thanks, John Siskin
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Kathryn Wesserling |
Thanks, John. I missed the tech-info you posted above about the slave unit - not realizing it would prevent possible frying. My sweet sister and her husband gave me a 580 EX II for Christmas. My 17-year niece then latched on to all of Dad's camera gear and dove into film photography. I wish all my problems were so easily solved. However, I'm passing the info to my sister, who does not have a flash unit for her Rebel XTi.
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John H. Siskin |
Hi Kathy, The 580 is an excellent item. This attachment can help: www.siskinphoto.com/magazine/zpdf/bootylight.pdf I have an article in the current issue of Photo Technique magazine that discusses how the power in the 580 and similar strobes compares to studio units. Thanks, John Siskin
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