Experiments with an old flash

Recently I had the oppor­tun­ity to acquire an older Vivatar 283 external flash / strobe for a good price. This is one of the early model external strobes that had really proved the test of time (years ago I had it’s big­ger brother, the 285, and missed the ver­sat­il­ity it provided). So when this one became avail­able I grabbed it.

My cur­rent interest in flash pho­to­graphy can all be blamed on this cool ‘niche’ blog; Strobist. It’s a great site pro­fil­ing flash tech­niques and setups, tools and pho­to­graph­ers. Inspir­a­tional, you might say.

Inspired I was.

So that brings me to this post and my first ‘exer­cise’. I’d acquired said flash and tested it to ensure that it wouldn’t fry my Lumix FZ30. It seems that older flashes may have a trig­ger voltage as high as 300v DC across the contacts…not too healthy for these sens­it­ive modern-day digital cam­eras. I’m happy to say this baby registered just under 9v. If you’re inter­ested in read­ing more about flash voltage, check out this art­icle and com­pre­hens­ive list­ing chart.

Test­ing done, I needed a sub­ject to shoot. Then the dogs wandered by…

Just to get you up to speed, they’re mini­ature piebald Dachshunds; Heloise and Selena. And yes, they’re black and white.

Next, I needed to set the scene. Since we live in a north­ern cli­mate that tends to cause water to change to a solid, I’m shoot­ing indoors for now. And, the little tur­keys need appro­pri­ate cloth­ing to ven­ture out­side. My wife found a great designer online (www dachsundsdressedforshow.com) who was able to get some very nifty look­ing coats to us in a very short time; winter rolled in early here in Alberta. The zebra stripes seem to suit them.

Dress the dogs, set them on a futon with a nice neut­ral col­our, drape a blanket behind for a nice con­trast col­our, and shoot away!

The shots were pretty simple at this point; I just wanted to get a feel for the flash with the cam­era. I’ve pos­ted five of them to flickr (and to the Strobist flickr group).

I found the illu­min­a­tion a bit harsh without any dif­fu­sion, so I grabbed an opaque plastic food con­tainer lid and held that in front of the flash, boun­cing light from the walls and roof.

Dif­fu­sion sys­tems are in my future. An umbrella/reflector/stands and maybe a nice fill light would also help, but hey, I’m just get­ting back into this and my wal­let needs to build up slowly

Also, the Viv­itar has only one axis of rota­tion, but once I take it off cam­era (I have a hot-shoe exten­sion cable arriv­ing shortly) that prob­lem will vanish.

But now I’m think­ing, is this thing going to really do what I need with por­trait and still life (and macro) work, or am I really going to need to invest in a lar­ger kit?

I guess only time will tell…

Tech­nor­ati Tags: Pho­to­graphy, Flash, Strobist, Viv­itar 283, Dogs