flash?

spicychicken · Jan 10, 2005

ook.. i have a minolta x-300 with a vivitar auto thyristor 2800 (whatever the hell that means) that connects to my hotshoe and i have no idea how to use it! what do i set for my shutter speed to take into account the extra burst of light? if i put it on the auto setting, will it recognize the flash and compensate?

the flash has asa and din information on the back of it with fstops but i don't understand it very much

how sad. can you clue me in a little bit?

tmpadmin · Jan 11, 2005

I didn't read it over but through the wonders of Google I found this.

http://www.vivitar.com/CustService/download/flashmanl/2800flsh.pdf

Hope it has something for you.

Big Mike · Jan 11, 2005

A flash with an auto thyristor is pretty easy to operate.

First find out your camera's x-sync speed. That is the fastest shutter speed that will work with a flash. Usually it's around 1/60 to 1/125 with a focal plane shutter.

Now you put your camera into manual mode and set the shutter speed to the sync speed or slower. Set the same f-stop on the flash and on the camera.

When you take a shot, the flash will read the reflected light and quench it's output when it thinks there is enough light to expose for the selected f-stop. You can adjust the shutter speed to control how much ambient light you capture. A longer shutter speed will expose more background, typically.

Flash photography can be pretty confusing so you may want to do some reading.