HAVE YOU EVER

[mysteryscribe]

Some of you probably know I build a couple of cameras now and then. Nothing fancy and only for my own amusement but I do it for the heck of it. At the moment I am grafting a kodak tourist 6.3 lens onto a Revere 127 camera. That is a side issue.

The lens will fire a flash but only on M sync... Most of you might have heard of it vaguely. There might even be one or two who know what it is. For those who don't its the sync that camera makers used in the late thirties, forties and into the sixties even.

The have you ever question is, HAVE YOU EVER MAKE PICTURES WITH FLASH BULBS FOR MONEY.... several who started as children with cameras probably made one or two or saw their father's or mother's do it. But have you ever been paid for pictures you shot with a flash bulb. not not a strobe light a real exploding flash bulb.

 

[craig]

No, but I remember that smell. Maybe that's what got me into photography? By the time I was old enough to handle a camera flash bulbs were a thing of the past. My schneider 210 for my 4x5 has x and m sync. Could you explain the m sync a little better?

 

[mysteryscribe]

In m sync the bulb is ignited before the shutter opened. It's milliseconds. The idea is to give the bulb time to reach full output before the shutter opens. Unlike strobe lights which have a constant rate of output, a bulb has to build like a campfire.

The slight delay will not allow you to successfully fire strobe on M sync or flash bulbs on x sync.

Most of the old kodaks with decent lenses had no flash capacity, even most of the later ones only had m (Fash bulb) sync. At the same time the europeans were building cameras with both. Even the old polaroids had a way to x sync them. Kodak fell way behind in my opinion at that point.

My rolliecord built in the fifties had x sync and most of the japanese 35mm of that period had both. My first strobe light weighed like five pounds because of the battery. I paid more for that old, no feature, strobe than I paid for the Rollie which I was shooting at the time. The battery was huge and had to be worn hanging from my neck. It was 210 volts and drained constantly. but to be honest I never wore it out.

I shot my first wedding in flash bulbs and it was really no different from the early strobes. Had to figure the aperture for each shot. No such thing as auto light output.

I have several boxes of bulb that I got with old cameras and I'm thinking about shooting some as a retro gimmick this spring. Just got to waxing nostalgic.

 

[markc]

The only bulbs I remember using where the ones that went on the Instamatic cameras. They were cubes with four bulbs, one to each side. They rotated, and after the fourth shot, you replaced the cube. There was a short extender that you could use to help reduce red-eye. I own a flash for my Agfa Clack that uses individual bulbs, but I've never used it.