Today, these retro strobes are practically being given away. So I’m sure many of you have asked the question: Are they still good for anything?

Now, if you started doing photography within the past decade or so, your camera probably included a built-in flash. With those, you might choose between a couple of different flash modes (or, the camera might pick for you); but the exposure settings are all figured out automatically.

But it wasn’t so simple back in the 1960s and 1970s. Flash was a separate, add-on accessory, usually made by a different company. And getting the exposure correct might require a little figuring.

Built-in flash may be easy to use. But light coming from directly above the lens gives a very stark, unflattering look. It’s not a very pleasant light for photographing people.

So my thinking is, a few cheap old flashes are a great way to start experimenting with different, more interesting styles of lighting.

Off-camera, diffused flash

I’m not going to start a longwinded discussion of lighting techniques here. You can look to the Strobist for inspiration and suggestions on that. Today, I’d just like to ID some different kinds of vintage flash gear, and explain a few points about how they’re used.

Warning, Warning!

But do I need to begin with this stern warning: Older flashes can damage modern cameras!

Before 1980 or so, camera shutters were entirely mechanical. The shutter mechanism included a couple of metal contacts, which touched together at precisely the right instant to trigger any flash that was connected.

A flash unit could use just about any trigger voltage, and this simple switch would still work fine. So many older flashes put out 200 volts or more on their trigger circuit! (Don’t worry, this can’t electrocute you—there is not enough current.)

This flash is powered by a single AA cell…

…but reads 150 volts across its sync contacts!

But throughout the 1980s, camera designs became much more “electronic.” Newer cameras commonly trigger the flash using a solid-state switch instead. These were designed to be used with a flash voltage of about five volts or so.

So DON’T go sticking random old flashes into your modern camera’s hot shoe.

Manufacturers are often maddeningly vague about what the maximum acceptable flash voltage is exactly; but you should always err on the side of caution. Here’s one attempt to compile sync voltages for various flash models.

The voltage warning applies even for some film cameras of the 1980s. My rule of thumb is this: Does a camera’s shutter work normally even when there are no batteries installed? If so, its sync contacts are all mechanical, and you don’t need to worry about trigger voltage. Otherwise, proceed with caution.

But I’ll explain shortly one way old flashes can used safely with any camera—modern or vintage.

Check the Batteries

Unfortunately, a flash that was put aside and forgotten during the Reagan administration may have leaking, scungy batteries remaining inside it—so that’s the first thing to check.

Badly-corroded battery contacts can sometimes be cleaned; but my success rate hasn’t been all that great. Perhaps the corrosion rots the internal wiring too? With good batteries, you want to hear a high-pitched rising whine, then see the ready-light come on within 30 seconds or so.

Count the Contacts

The next place to look is at the bottom of the foot. Are there a few metal contacts, or just one?

A single foot contact, or several?

Flashes with multiple pins are so-called “dedicated” units. They are designed to match the hot-shoe contacts of one particular brand of camera. The extra pins send auto-exposure signals, add a flash-ready lamp in the viewfinder, and so on.

These extra pin locations are not compatible between brands. Mis-matching a dedicated flash with the wrong brand of camera might even damage something.

Each manufacturer’s system has slightly different capabilities, and I certainly can’t describe every one. But just remember, these extra features only help you when you use a matching type of camera (and when you can track down the manual, to explain how everything works).

Dumb is Good

But many flashes only have a single contact in the center of the foot. It’s simply the trigger which tells the flash, “fire now!” And these simple, bare-bones models are the easiest to understand. Many have no automation whatsoever—just an on/0ff switch.

“Dumb” flashes fire at the same brightness every time, no matter what the subject is. So how does the photographer know what exposure settings to use? Well, it is the distance from the flash to the subject which determines how bright the illumination is. So these simple flashes will have some kind of calculator dial or table, to tell you the proper f/stop to use at a given distance.

Notice that I said “f/stop.” With flash, a camera’s shutter speed doesn’t affect the exposure. The electronic pulse is much briefer than any shutter speed; and it’s usually much brighter than any room light.

However, there is one complication with focal plane shutters (the type most SLRs use): On the highest shutter speeds, there is not one instant when the entire film gate is uncovered. So to use flash, you must stay at or below the “sync speed.”

The shutter speed dial will indicate this somehow: e.g. “60″ is in orange, or one speed is marked with a lightning bolt or an “X.”

(Cameras with leaf shutters built inside the lens have no such restriction—this is one of their advantages.)

Okay then, how do you determine the right aperture?

Here’s the typographically-bewildering exposure table on the back of one cheapie flash. Not exactly user-friendly, eh?

But I’ve added some annotations to explain what you’re looking at:

The the red outline shows the settings when using a film speed of ASA 100, or DIN 21. (Today we would say “ISO” speed instead—but the numbers haven’t changed.)

The numbers in that column are the f/stops to use, when the subject is at different distances. The red arrow shows the row for 10 feet (or 3 meters)—showing that the lens should be set to f/5.6.

Slightly more legible is the “calculator dial” type. To use these, you begin by twisting it to match the film speed you are using (here, ISO 200). Then you read off the f/stops to use for different distances:

Now keep in mind these f/stop guides are not sacred gospel. They are based on typical indoor rooms with light-toned, reflective walls and ceilings. Otherwise, you might need to open up an additional f/stop or so. If you put a diffuser over the flash (like my Tupperware flash project), or bounce the light off a wall, you’ll also lose a couple of f/stops of brightness.

Plus, a 30-year-old flash may not have all the oomph it did when new. So I suggest shooting some tests first, before you rely on these indicated apertures.

And the Not-So-Dumb

Also extremely common are vintage flashes labelled “Auto” something-or-other. They might even include the magical word “Thyristor.”

I know, that sounds like some Star Trek mumbo jumbo—”Captain, I don’t think the Thyristor Crystals can take it much longer!” But a thyristor is just a device which cuts the flash pulse short, once a photocell sees sufficient light has bounced back from the subject.

The flash shown below represents one popular type. Note below the photocell, there’s a switch with two color positions and an “M” setting:

With an Auto model, the exposure settings work a little differently. On the back panel, slide the indicator until the correct film speed shows. (I’ve shown 400-speed film here.) Then the color-coded arrows give you two f/stop options: f/5.6 or f/8. You set the camera aperture to the f/stop matching whichever color the front switch is on—so for the red position, f/5.6.

The color bars show the distance ranges where auto-exposure will function. The red (wider) f/stop gives more distant reach; but you might use the blue (smaller) aperture shooting up close, or to maximize depth of field.

After you’ve set the lens aperture correctly, exposure should be automatic—even as you move closer or further from the subject.

(In the “M” mode, you’d need to change f/stops manually, to the ones shown above the different distance numbers. This works just like the “dumb” flashes I discussed above.)

With auto flash, even if you do something unusual like cover it with a diffuser or a colored gel, the length of the flash pulse gets adjusted automatically. You can even bounce the flash off a white ceiling or a wall, giving soft, diffused lighting. Just make sure the flash photocell stays unobstructed and points towards the subject, and you’re good to go.

With some auto flash models, the light sensor is not particularly visible; so you might not recognize that’s what you’ve got. Here’s one where changing the front switch from “M” to “A” uncovers a teensy little hole in the switch itself—that’s the photocell!

And I’m sure there are other weird variations out there I’ve yet to discover. But any “auto” flash will have a photocell somewhere on its front.

The Wonderful “Test” Button

With all my scary warnings about high voltages frying your camera, you may wonder why I’m still enthusiastic about vintage flashes.

Well, partly it’s because I own so many pre-1970s cameras, which can can use them with no problems. But old flashes can still help you make interesting pictures, even if they’re never connected to a camera:

Open flash: Hold shutter open on “bulb,” then fire the strobe.

This was taken in dim ambient light, around dusk. Holding the shutter open for a second or so (at about f/11) barely registered some blurry traces of the background.

But almost all the exposure in the face comes from the flash. I simply held the camera in one hand and triggered the flash with my other one—no connection between them.

You could also set up a night shot, with the camera on a tripod: Hold the shutter open on “B” (with a locking cable release or a helpful assistant) and you can walk through the scene, “painting” different areas with multiple flash bursts. I’m sure you can start to imagine other possibilities, too.

But for this to work, the flash must have a “test” button. If it does, you’ll usually find it towards the bottom of the back side:

Or, sometimes, the lens of the “flash ready” lamp does double duty as the test button:

But often, the test button is anonymous and unlabeled:

Just remember if you’re using a manual flash, that it’s the flash’s distance from the subject (not the camera’s) which you use to figure the exposure setting.

Connecting

Now, if you have an older mechanical camera, so you’re sure it’s safe, you can let the camera trigger the flash too. The foot of the flash should fit into the camera’s accessory shoe:

Camera Accessory Shoes of the 1980s, 1960s, and 1950s

The camera at the left has extra contacts, to work with its own brand of dedicated flash. But simple flashes with a single contact pin will also trigger fine (although without any whizzy extra features). That’s because the central pad is always the standard sync connection—as shown in the plain, vanilla hot shoe of the middle camera.

But a camera from the early 1960s or before will generally have a “cold” shoe, lacking any electrical connections. What to do then?

For this, you’ll need a sync cord. And unfortunately, not every flash unit provides a socket for one. Plus, different brands use different connector styles—there isn’t one single standard.

But below we see one common plug style, fitting into the not-very-obvious hole in the foot of this flash:

(It’s is the same size as a 2.5 mm mono audio connector, if you ever need to homebrew something from electronics-store parts.)

Happily, on the camera side, the “PC” style connector is almost universal:

This abbreviation has nothing to do with personal computers (it predates them by decades). It comes from two German brands of shutter, Prontor and Compur—the original users of that style of sync connector.

If you get really stuck matching a cable to a particular flash, try Paramount Cords. You can also buy extension sync cords that are extra long (I own one that’s about 15 feet). This can be quite handy when working with studio/portrait setups.

More Magic

If you find a particularly wonderful old (but high-voltage) flash, and you’re really desperate to plug it into a modern camera, there is a solution: A little $47 device called a Wein Safe Sync. This isolates the flash trigger so the camera only gets a safe couple of volts. But it seems a bit expensive to me—though I admit, it’s much cheaper than the repair bill for a fried camera.

But recently I discovered another cute gadget worth mentioning: A vintage Honeywell “Foto-Eye”:

What is it? A flash slave trigger.

Its “eye” (the bluish photocell on the front) detects any other flash firing in the room. Another strobe plugged into its PC socket will trigger in sync with the first one.

I’ve found it to be surprisingly sensitive. Plus, it dates back to the dark ages of high-voltage strobes. So it’s a great way to trigger an old “dangerous” flash, using the light pulse from a safe one—with no danger to any camera.

More

Over the decades, manufacturers have attempted many solutions to the problem of flash exposure. I can think of about six different systems right off the top of my head. So I’ve had to leave out some of the weirder and odder possibilities you might come across. But I’ve tried to cover the vintage flash types you’ll see most often.

Light is the essence of photography. With some old unloved flashes, costing just a few dollars, I think you can have quite a lot of fun.

If you need an impromptu light table, just open a blank document/browser window on your laptop (or LCD desktop monitor). Sweet!

Nowadays when you shop for filters and other lens accessories, it’s universal for their sizes to be listed in millimeters—reflecting the influence of metric-speaking Japanese and German optics manufacturers.

Yet if you flip through 50-year-old photo magazines, or root through the odd-parts bins at a vintage camera sale, you’ll start seeing accessories cryptically labeled Series V, Series VI, Series VII, etc. What are these weird sizes, and are they good for anything?

A Series filter has three parts: An adapter to fit the lens; a standard filter disk; and a retaining ring

“Series” adapters were the most common American system for lens accessories in the middle decades of the 20th century. And they were actually a very cool, totally modular way of doing things. My googling has not turned up much history about Series accessories. So I’ll share the information I’ve been able to put together—but I’d be grateful to hear from anyone who can steer me towards a definitive source.

My suspicion is that (as with many other photographic standards) it was Eastman Kodak who established the Series system. In any event, Kodak became a major supplier of Series filters and accessories.

The idea of the system was this: Colored filters, close-up lenses, etc., were manufactured in a few standard diameters—as “drop-in” disks, without threads. You chose the Series that would cover your largest diameter lens. Then, a multitude of different adapter rings were available, sized to fit all your various cameras and lenses.

Each particular Series had one standard-sized retaining ring, to hold the filter disk into the adapter. Some retaining rings had both male and female threads, allowing you to stack additional filters. Conveniently, the retaining ring could also be replaced with a lens shade having the same standard Series thread.

Mixing and matching modular parts. At right, a Series-threaded lens shade; can also be used without a filter

A few manufacturers put threads on their lens barrels that were “natively” standard Series sizes—thus no adapter was needed, just the retaining ring. Several Argus, Kodak and rangefinder Canon lenses adopted this system (and no doubt other brands I haven’t come across yet).

The dimensions of the system were specified in inches, not millimeters (this may resolve some mysteries you have with weird unidentified lens or filter threads). The different Series sizes were designated with roman numerals, and ranged from quite tiny (e.g. for cine lenses) up to moderately large. But Series V, VI, and VII seem to be the most common (and useful) sizes.

I measure their dimensions as:

Series V — filters 1-3/16″ (~30mm) — retaining thread 1-1/4″ (~32mm)
Series VI — filters 1-5/8″ (~41mm) — retaining thread 1-3/4″ (~44mm)
Series VII — filters 2″ (~51mm) — retaining thread 2-1/8″ (~54mm)

Series adapters to fit different lenses: TLR-style bayonet mount, unthreaded push-on, and threaded styles

Colored filters in Series sizes were available from many manufacturers—both names that will be familiar (like Tiffen) to others that faded away decades ago (like Omag). Some useful black and white filters might be found under unfamiliar, older color designations, such as deep red (formerly designated “A” but now #25), green (formerly G, now #13), and yellow (K2, now #8, or X1, now #11).

Kodak sold “Portra” close-up lenses in the common Series sizes, in strengths of +1, +2, and +3 diopters; but with non-reflex cameras you need a table of corrections to find the distance for proper focus. It’s nicest to get Porta lenses together with their original yellow Kodak containers, which include the table as a handy decal inside the lid.

Among the other Series oddities you sometimes see are Kodak’s “Telek” attachments: These were lenses with negative diopter powers. While it’s a bit non-intuitive, adding one in front of a lens and then racking its focus outwards has the effect of lengthening its effective focal length—yielding a quick & dirty telephoto lens. (The strongest -4 Telek can almost double the focal length). Unfortunately these are really only practical for cameras offering groundglass focusing, e.g. a Press camera.

Now, for most of my photographic youth, I used Japanese SLR systems, whose manufacturers tried to stick with a single filter diameter across most of their lens lines. For Olympus, it was 49mm; for Canon, 55mm. You just bought a couple of filters in the right size, and were done with it.

But, as my fascination with vintage cameras grew, somehow more and more of them began appearing in my home. And I had a problem—it seemed that each one used a different filter size!

But this is exactly the situation where the Series system shines. A friend had inherited a garage-ful of assorted series adapters and accessories; and by sifting through his heap, I was able to find adapters for about nine of my favorite vintage camera lenses—allowing me to use a single set of Series VI filters for everything.

Okay, I admit you could approximate the same thing today with one set of (oversized) threaded filters plus an arsenal of different step-up rings. But another advantage of the Series system is that many “slip-on” adapters were sold—making it possible to use accessories even on lenses that have no filter threads. (Or, ones with damaged threads, or impossible-to-find sizes… ) One Kodak 42mm push-on adapter turns out to be a perfect fit on vintage Diana cameras.

Slip-on Series adapters let you use filters with threadless oddball cameras

Admittedly, one place where this clever scheme falls apart is with polarizing filters. A polarizer needs to be rotated to a particular angle to be most effective, something that wasn’t practical with the Series drop-in disks. (In fact, there were clever threaded polarizing attachments manufactured for the Series system—you looked through a separate auxiliary polarizer while rotating a control handle—but it may be tough finding one today.)

It’s been decades since Series accessories were being widely produced. Yet if you dig around on eBay you will still find sellers offering series adapter rings and drop-in filters. (Note that some listings use Series 6, Series 7, etc., instead of the roman numerals.) Also, some specialist mail-order firms may be able to help.

If you need to track down every little odd Series filter component one at a time, the process might not be worth the effort. But if someday you’re as lucky as I was, and stumble onto some vast forgotten cache of Series accessories, just remember—it’s a neat system that’s still completely useful today.

Yet TLR viewing has been hard for me to get used to. The waist-level finder is great for giving an overall impression of the composition; yet the groundglass image often becomes washed out in bright ambient light. Also, at waist level it’s sometimes hard to judge whether the focus is exactly right.

Using the Autocord’s pop-up magnifier does a better job of blocking glare, and lets you focus accurately. But the view of the whole frame is not very satisfactory. It’s a slight strain to see the corners of the groundglass from so close, and this also worsens their dimness.

Hence I’m trying out a new solution: A homemade “chimney” magnifying hood. Besides blocking stray light, it seems to give a nice viewing compromise—large enough to focus easily, yet giving a good overall sense of the framing.

I built one earlier, failed version of this idea. It was too tall, and its rigid box construction made it unwieldy to pack along. This time I created one that unfolds, so that when flattened it can be stowed in a camera-bag side pocket. And I used a higher-magnification lens, reducing the height to only 3″taller than the TLR’s own viewing hood.

This version is just made from scrap leftover Crescent board, partly scored through its faces along the fold lines. I sprayed flat black paint onto the inner surfaces, then tacked a magnifier behind the eye hole using hot-melt glue.

The rounded tab blocks light from entering the side of my eye socket. But it also has a second thickness of cardboard glued to it, under which you tuck the flap with the magnifying lens. This holds it in position when the sides are rubber-banded together.

I’m a left-eyed viewer—so naturally righties would build this so the rounded shield was on the opposite side.

Focal Lengths, Powers, and Diopters

The height of the chimney depends on the power of the magnifier you use; and it can take a little searching to find a good lens for this.

Recall that the focal length of a lens is the distance behind it where objects at infinity will come to focus. Turn the light paths around, and it’s also the distance where close objects will appear to your eye to be at infinity. For a quick check of a simple lens’s focal length, you can use the sun, measuring how far behind the glass a sharp image forms.

The lens I found had a focal length of about 165mm. In terms of magnifying “powers” this would be considered a 2.5x magnifier. I’m nearsighted—I can’t focus at infinity—so I made the chimney’s height a little shorter than the focal length.

I think a magnifier of slightly higher power, say about 140mm f.l., would work nicely and make the chimney even more compact. (But a “3x” magnifier would be 125mm f.l.)

A natural question for a photographer to ask is, “could I use a leftover close-up attachment for this?” The answer is “probably not.” Close-up lenses are specified in Diopters, and usually range from +1 to +4.

But the desired focal lengths here would translate to 6 or 7 diopters. And I don’t ever recall seeing a close-up attachment that powerful on the market.

Why Are We Doing This?

Sometimes you want to take pictures in a place where the ambient light is so dim that electronic flash is the only way get a photo at all.

However the typical flash, just a few inches from the camera lens, is the harshest and ugliest form of illumination ever invented. The blasted, shadowless “deer in the headlamps” look is particularly unflattering for people photos.

For mood lighting in your living room, you don’t use a single bare light bulb, do you? Of course not. You soften and spread the light with a lampshade, right? Adding a diffuser to your flash gun is the same idea.

And better yet, move the flash away from the lens, too—this adds shadows to give better three-dimensionality and softer modeling to faces.

Choose Wisely

Finding the right plastic storage tub for this project can take some scrounging. Fortunately many thrift stores and rummage sales are overflowing with unwanted plastic containers. You’re looking for one about 6″ across, and its lid must be frosted, milky white plastic—not color-tinted, and not perfectly clear.

The tub bottom can be any color or shape, but it should be at least three inches deep to leave room for light to bounce around. Authentic vintage Tupperware bowls are perfect for this; but we’re illustrating the project with a Rubbermaid Take-Along tub (right)—a style that was currently on the market the last time I checked.

For the flash itself, you simply want an ultra-basic, dumb, AA-powered strobe. Any whizzy auto-exposure features (e.g. “thyristor” types) will be useless: The photocell would be blinded by the flash-lit insides of the Tupperware. However you can use an auto model in manual mode, if that’s all you have available.

Not all vintage flashes have flash-trigger contacts in their foot, but that’s a desirable feature. (Unfortunately the particular flash unit illustrated in this article turned out to be rather unreliable at triggering on certain cameras—so don’t go hunting for one just like it.)

Remove the lid of the tub, and spray the interior with silver spray paint. Paint does not stick very well to the waxy surface of many plastics, so roughen the surface with steel wool or fine sandpaper first.

We want all the flash’s light to be directed forwards; so spray two coats to insure that the tub’s sides are fully opaque when you’re done. White spray paint will also work, if that’s all you have handy. Or you could line the insides of the tub with aluminum foil, using spray adhesive or glue stick.

Mark the outline of the flash’s body on the bottom of the tub, positioning it so the flash tube is centered.

Cut an opening in the plastic, leaving tabs of about 1/2″ wide to bend back and tape to the flash. With some styles of flash, you may not have room for a tab on the bottom edge.

The plastic of some food tubs (like this one) is rather brittle—so cut and bend slowly and carefully. You can see I still ended up with some unwanted cracks.

Tape the tub’s flaps to the body of your flash unit. Avoid taping over the access door to the battery compartment.

This inside view shows the desired result: The flash tube is centered in the bottom, and the plastic tabs are taped snugly against the flash so that no light can sneak out the back.

Replace the lid to the food tub, and the diffuser is ready to use! The top illustration of this article shows how the completed flash would fit an SLR with a hot-shoe flash connection. Note that with some cameras, the width of the food tub might interfere with the lens, or block viewfinder windows—be sure to check that first that when selecting your container.

Going Sideways

As I mentioned earlier, light from directly beside the lens fails to give three-dimensional shading to your subject. Light from off-camera flash is much better at defining shapes and casting flattering shadows. So for the best tupperflash results, trigger the flash while holding the tub well off to the side or above your camera—either on a bracket, or held in your other free hand.

To fire the flash off-camera, here’s one simple solution: Hold the shutter open on the “B” (bulb”) setting, then pop off the flash using its test button. In many dim environments, the room light contributes a negligible exposure compared to the flash—but, if there are some ghostly blurs from the ambient light, that can be an interesting effect too!

(Your test button may be an unmarked red pushbutton , or even the clear cover of the ready-lamp on some flashes.)

For Extra Credit

But the “correct” way to trigger things is to connect an extension PC cable to the X-sync socket on your camera. If you’re lucky, your flash has a cable connector in its base using a plug style you can still buy today. However over the decades, different flash manufacturers introduced a bewildering variety of plug styles, and usually you aren’t so lucky.

Solution? Take any random PC flash cable from the clearance bin of your camera store; then cannibalize it by snipping off the useless connector.

Disassemble the foot on your flash unit and drill a hole to insert the snipped cable end. Solder the cable’s two wires to the flash hot shoe connection, and re-assemble. (If you don’t mind sacrificing the shoe-mount option, you could simply discard the flash foot, and splice directly to the wires from the flash.)

Getting Exposed

To figure the correct exposure, consult the table or calculator dial on the flash, based on your particular film speed and subject distance. Take the suggested f/stop, then open up two stops to compensate for the diffuser’s light loss. After seeing your results, you may need to adjust your personal tupperware fudge-factor up or down from there.

Oh—and the final bonus of this style of diffuser? You will get many photos of people grinning curiously at your crazy homebrew flash set-up. I promise it!

See examples from the Tupperflash in action on Vox’s Flickr stream.

Sekonic L-398; Voigtländer VC Meter II; Soligor Flash Meter

The Sekonic L-398M is the 90s version of a classic incident light meter design that goes back about 60 years to the original Norwood Director. The main “improvement” of the M version seems to have been printing the number scales larger (which we over-40s do appreciate). Out of several light meters I own, for some reason this is usually the one I grab first. (Maybe it’s because of that easy-to-hold football shape.) Its main weakness is not being very sensitive in low light.

One subtlety of an incident meter is that you point the dome at the camera, not the light source. The 3-D shape of the dome weights the light coming from different directions in a way that yields a good average exposure for 3-D subjects.

This is the style of light meter that Hollywood considered the standard for decades—if they trusted incident meters to get their million-dollar stars properly exposed on film, that’s good enough for me. A version of the 398 is still in production, although now they’ve replaced the (theoretically toxic) selenium cell with a silicon version.

The Voigtlander VC Meter II was an appallingly expensive splurge—especially considering how tiny it is. You see my little loop of monofilament fishing line, added after the thing tumbled out of a camera hot shoe one time too many. It’s definitely the sleekest, smallest way to add metering to a vintage camera that lacks it. It’s also quite accurate in low light.

I have two beefs with it: One is that the ISO dial is way too easy to bump and nudge away from the correct setting. I eventually had to stuff some little plastic shims under the dial to add friction—a rather annoying design flaw considering the price. Beef number two is that the f/stop dial turns steplessly, but the shutter speed dial is click-stopped. Considering that I often use this with 1950s cameras having odd shutter speeds like 1/25, 1/300, etc., I would have preferred either no click stops, or for the aperture dial to have half-stop detents instead.

Also, I found it a little unintuitive that the light reading registers at the moment you take your finger off the orange button, and then stays held in memory as you twist the dials to try different exposure combinations. But once you understand that, it works fine.

There are many fancy digital flash meters on the market; but if you’re a guy like Vox who plays around with tupperware flash or softboxes made from roof flashing, or you would feel ridiculous checking your flash exposure with anything so high-tech.

The Soligor flash meter is one I nabbed off of eBay for… uh, seventeen dollars or something. This model is much more widely known under the Wein brand name; but I’ve seen variants branded as Singer/Graflex, Honeywell, and Soligor too. I love the totally garage-y, analog, project-box aesthetic—you don’t quite believe this was a real commercial product; but I’ll be damned if they aren’t still selling them.

The sensor element is in the white dome at the middle of the knob. This is actually the old version, where twisting the knob changed the meter sensitivity for different film speeds. The current models have a lame system where the needle indicates the f/stop that would be correct for ISO 100; then there’s a calculator dial which translates that to the equivalent f/stop at different ISO speeds. Maybe they had some trouble with the sensitivity pot getting dirty and causing inaccurate readings? But functionally, the old direct-readout style was much more sensible.

I’m not sure I trust its accuracy to much more than about a stop; but if you’re trying to get exposure in the ballpark with a mix of weird diffused, bounced, slaved, yard-sale strobes, this thing is a godsend.

A version of this originally posted on Flickr, 28 December 2007