Old speedlight 155A

[Tamster]

Good Morning all!! I friend of mine gave me a old film camera of hers with a flash. Ihave found that the flash works while on my camera but i was wondering if it would work off the camera as well? Just wasn't sure since this is such an old flash and wasn't sure if normal
triggers would work with it? Thanks in advance!

[inkista]

Synch voltage should be safe. But next time someone gives you an old speedlight, don't just try it on your camera. Some older flashes had very very big capacitors and can fry modern digital equipment. The first generation of Canon dSLRs had a sync voltage limit of only 6V. The newer dSLRs should have a limit of 250V, but some folks are nervous at putting anything higher than 6V on their hotshoe.

The 155A was measured around 8 or 9V.

It's not a whole helluva lot more powerful than your built-in flash, actually (GN 55ft. vs. 43ft for the pop-up).

You can find a PDF of the manual here.

Looking through it, it looks like you can use it for off-camera flash, depending on the triggering system. You'll probably have to use the hotshoe, as there's only a proprietary sync connector, not a standard PC port. But it does have a manual mode--although it's not like what most of us consider manual mode with explicit output levels of 1, 1/2, 1/4, etc. etc. You're going to have to play around with the settings to see how they affect the power output.

[Tamster]

Originally Posted by inkista

Synch voltage should be safe. But next time someone gives you an old speedlight, don't just try it on your camera. Some older flashes had very very big capacitors and can fry modern digital equipment. The first generation of Canon dSLRs had a sync voltage limit of only 6V. The newer dSLRs should have a limit of 250V, but some folks are nervous at putting anything higher than 6V on their hotshoe.

The 155A was measured around 8 or 9V.

It's not a whole helluva lot more powerful than your built-in flash, actually (GN 55ft. vs. 43ft for the pop-up).

You can find a PDF of the manual here.

Looking through it, it looks like you can use it for off-camera flash, depending on the triggering system. You'll probably have to use the hotshoe, as there's only a proprietary sync connector, not a standard PC port. But it does have a manual mode--although it's not like what most of us consider manual mode with explicit output levels of 1, 1/2, 1/4, etc. etc. You're going to have to play around with the settings to see how they affect the power output.

Oh wow, really? So i could hve messed up my camera? Yeeks!
OK thanks, i will read up on that. I really don't know much about lighting yet, i'm sure once i get more familiar i'd have realized that. Thanks for the info!

[inkista]

You might've messed up your camera, but it's pretty rare, now that the limit is a reasonable one. However, some third-parties (most notoriously, the Vivitar 283 and non-HV 285) still go over the 250V limit, so yeah, it's worth taking the minute or so to look up or measure the synch voltage before slapping it on the hotshoe. If you're really nervous, Wein makes a connector called the "SafeSync" which will bring the voltage down, but the damn thing costs about $50.

[BCampbell]

Looking through that manual (nice find inkista), it looks like this flash is a sort of proto-version of the thyristor-type flashes. To use that flash, you would set the ASA dial to your film's rating, choose which of the two apertures you wanted to shoot at -- the red or green arrow -- set the mode switch to red or green and fire away.

You would actually have a little more control, since you can change the camera's ISO setting to compensate if you wanted a different aperture. But remember that changing ISO will also change the amount of ambient light received for a given shutter speed.

That's not such a bad system, and if it had zoom and tilt I would say go for it. But it doesn't so this is really going to be limiting; at the least you want a flash that can tilt up to 90 degrees so you can bounce, and having at least 90 degrees of swivel if not 180 or more, is nice.

If you want to do some cheap flash photography, I'd really look into getting an inexpensive thyristor model with better zoom, tilt, and swivel. I have an old Sunpak 333D that works great but you can even get new Yongnuo models for under $100. A thyristor flash lets you choose your ISO and aperture and has a sensor that turns off the flash once it's calculated that enough light has been put out. It basically does a reflected meter reading, in essense.

This isn't perfect, and notably has some problems with very bright or very dark subjects and reflective surfaces, but you can get good results. This was simply with the 333D on-camera with a simple foamcore bounce card.

Hope this helps.

[Tamster]

Originally Posted by BCampbell

Looking through that manual (nice find inkista), it looks like this flash is a sort of proto-version of the thyristor-type flashes. To use that flash, you would set the ASA dial to your film's rating, choose which of the two apertures you wanted to shoot at -- the red or green arrow -- set the mode switch to red or green and fire away.

You would actually have a little more control, since you can change the camera's ISO setting to compensate if you wanted a different aperture. But remember that changing ISO will also change the amount of ambient light received for a given shutter speed.

That's not such a bad system, and if it had zoom and tilt I would say go for it. But it doesn't so this is really going to be limiting; at the least you want a flash that can tilt up to 90 degrees so you can bounce, and having at least 90 degrees of swivel if not 180 or more, is nice.

If you want to do some cheap flash photography, I'd really look into getting an inexpensive thyristor model with better zoom, tilt, and swivel. I have an old Sunpak 333D that works great but you can even get new Yongnuo models for under $100. A thyristor flash lets you choose your ISO and aperture and has a sensor that turns off the flash once it's calculated that enough light has been put out. It basically does a reflected meter reading, in essense.

This isn't perfect, and notably has some problems with very bright or very dark subjects and reflective surfaces, but you can get good results. This was simply with the 333D on-camera with a simple foamcore bounce card.

Hope this helps.

Thanks yes it does! Sorry for the delay, I've been out of the loop for a few days!