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While cleaning up some old junk at my dads place I found this old flash unit. It's a bit grotty looking but after chucking some batteries in it I found it still works fine. It's also got an inbuilt light meter which works to some extent (I'm not sure how good it is but when I cover up the sensor the flash fires brighter)



I realise it's not a large or decent flash by any stretch of the imagination but in the absence of anything else I'd like to have an experiment with it as seperate flash for my D70. What's the best way I can make use of it ?
Is there some sort of a hot shoe extension lead I can use ? (both the camera and flash only have a hot shoe connection for triggering)

Cheers

Jay

In my opinion, it would make a great flash for macro work. You could mount it on a bracket. You should be able to get a PC connector/hot shoe arrangement so you can use the flash off the hot shoe. I have one for my macro set up.

Here's my macro set up:





You can see the adapter that fits into the hot shoe and takes a PC connector from the flash. Another alternative would be a slave/hotshoe adapter and run the flash off the inbuilt D70 flash.

Jay,

First of all, if you're contemplating connecting this to your D70, grab a DMM and measure the trigger voltage across its terminals. Then, check that value against the safe values that the D70 is able to use. You don't want it to fry your camera, after all.

You can get a hotshoe to cable adapter, which will let you use a standard sync cord from the camera to the flash.

You can get a light trigger unit through eBay, and use the on-camera flash (turn off the pre-flash) to trigger this.

Or you can use a radio trigger transmitter and receiver to set it off.

Go here to check out some references for old flashes their trigger voltages and recommendations A voightlander flash is mentioned - maybe not the same as yours, however this one listed is not recommended

http://www.botzilla.com/photo/strobeVolts.html

I would not put this flash unit onto any DSLR camera.... the sync voltage is too dangerous..... try putting your finger over the contacts and you will soon discover what I mean! Most modern flash units now work at about 5 volts... the same as the logic circuit within the camera.

What you can do with this flash it to connect it to a slave cell so that it will fire remotely when triggered from another flash unti.... this can be really good for providing fill light or background lighting as required.

The D70 is rated to handle a 250V positive flash trigger voltage, which should be adequate for this flash - but check it to make sure. I use a Metz 45 CT4 with my D70 regularly - the Metz measures 27V.

Canon cameras are, I seem to recall, a lot more sensitive to flash trigger voltages.

Cheers