newbie flash question

The nearest camera store to me is 100 miles away, and I can't find a
definitive answer to this online.

I had an old Minolta auto 320 which swiveled, tilted, and had a very
high guide number. It wasn't TTL, of course, and had a manual mode
where you could adjust the flash power. A circular table on the back
moved with the flash power set, you turned a wheel to your film ISO,
and you looked at the table on the wheel for the distance to the
subject, and then read what to set the camera aperture to. I now have
a compact camera with a manual mode. Is there a comparable flash I
could use as a slave to the camera flash? High power, tilt,
swivel,adjustable power, and a table that changed depending on the ISO
you inputed, and gave you the aperture setting? Any help is greatly
appreciated.

In article , wrote:

The nearest camera store to me is 100 miles away, and I can't find a
definitive answer to this online.

I had an old Minolta auto 320 which swiveled, tilted, and had a very
high guide number. It wasn't TTL, of course, and had a manual mode
where you could adjust the flash power. A circular table on the back
moved with the flash power set, you turned a wheel to your film ISO,
and you looked at the table on the wheel for the distance to the
subject, and then read what to set the camera aperture to. I now have
a compact camera with a manual mode. Is there a comparable flash I
could use as a slave to the camera flash? High power, tilt,
swivel,adjustable power, and a table that changed depending on the ISO
you inputed, and gave you the aperture setting? Any help is greatly
appreciated.

if you want to keep using that, just get a slave.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Optical-Slaves/ci/1736/N/4168864834

On May 28, 2017, wrote
(in ):


The nearest camera store to me is 100 miles away, and I can't find a
definitive answer to this online.

I had an old Minolta auto 320 which swiveled, tilted, and had a very
high guide number. It wasn't TTL, of course, and had a manual mode
where you could adjust the flash power. A circular table on the back
moved with the flash power set, you turned a wheel to your film ISO,
and you looked at the table on the wheel for the distance to the
subject, and then read what to set the camera aperture to. I now have
a compact camera with a manual mode. Is there a comparable flash I
could use as a slave to the camera flash? High power, tilt,
swivel,adjustable power, and a table that changed depending on the ISO
you inputed, and gave you the aperture setting? Any help is greatly
appreciated.

I found this:
https://www.photo.net/discuss/threads/minolta-auto-320x-flash-unit.247270/

--

Regards,
Savageduck

On 05/28/2017 02:38 PM, Jer ) wrote:

The nearest camera store to me is 100 miles away, and I can't find a
definitive answer to this online.

I had an old Minolta auto 320 which swiveled, tilted, and had a very
high guide number. It wasn't TTL, of course, and had a manual mode
where you could adjust the flash power. A circular table on the back
moved with the flash power set, you turned a wheel to your film ISO,
and you looked at the table on the wheel for the distance to the
subject, and then read what to set the camera aperture to. I now have
a compact camera with a manual mode. Is there a comparable flash I
could use as a slave to the camera flash? High power, tilt,
swivel,adjustable power, and a table that changed depending on the ISO
you inputed, and gave you the aperture setting? Any help is greatly
appreciated.



There are a lot of flash units on the market. If you are going for "high
power" and all the swivel, tilt, adjustable power, you might want to
consider a studio flash. Many studio strobes will have a built-in slave
trigger so they will fire with your camera's flash. Of course a studio
flash is going to require some kind of light stand, and either an AC
outlet or a big battery pack.

The circular table you refer to is just a "Guide Number" calculator. In
the good ol' days, before auto strobes, we used a guide number to set
the f/stop. For a certain ISO and a certain flash output, you had a
guide number. You measured the distance from the flash to the subject,
divided the guide number by that distance, and the result was the f/stop.
For example: I had some studio strobes with a guide number of 320 with
Portra film. If the distance from the strobe to the subject was ten
feet, 320/10 = f/32. Be aware that the distance from strobe to subject
is the distance the light travels. If I were to bounce the strobe off
the ceiling, then the measured distance would be from the strobe to the
ceiling and back down to the subject. (And throw in a half/stop or so to
allow for the reflectivity of the ceiling.)


--
Ken Hart