Auxiliary Power For My Metz 44 AF 2 Part 1

Click here to read the entire DPREVIEW.COM  review

In an earlier post, I heralded th`e arrival of the new Fuji EFX-500 flash, shown at left, an OEM flash with enough power and features to warrant a very hard look. To the good, it can take an external accessory battery pack and has wireless TTL exposure options. To the bad, it has a substantial price tag, comparable to the top of the line Nikon speedlights.  However, I still wondered if an older (sealed lead acid battery) Quantum QB1 battery pack could be adapted to work with the Metz 44AF-2 I had just purchased.

My obligatory disclaimer includes both the “you break it, you bought it” warning, and a confession that I already had two working QB 1 battery packs and a bunch of Vivitar 283 power cables for them. This meant that I already had a rechargeable power source and a cable to deliver the power to the Metz.

Click here to read the original Shutterbug article.

 Original Source Information: When the Vivitar 283 was King, there were dozens of do-it-yourselfers trying to find ways to boost the number of full-power flashes available to the photographer.  This particular post (right) uses a BUSS 20 amp Time Delay Fuse as an AA battery stand-in. Since it's dimensions are nearly identical to an AA battery, two can be inserted into the chambers of the Vivitar's removable battery cluster and provide the the necessary leads for the external battery.If you follow the link, you can see that new fuses are not particularly cheap, and they're not particular easy to find locally.

Ebay To The Rescue:After a bit of searching, I found and bought ten of these precious fuses for $8.00 plus $4.00 shipping. This saved me a great deal of money when compared to the price of a "new" one. Admittedly, they had an "aged copper patina" which I'll remove with some 0000 steel wool. After that, I checked each one to be sure that they could still conduct current and hadn't already been "blown". At first, I tried juggling a single AA battery, a fuse, and the two leads of a volt meter, trying to get all the contact points to touch. I solved the problem by placing the batteries on a table, sandwiched between two paperback books to keep them in alignment.

Here you see me holding my newly acquired treasure. I have no idea where theses fuses came from, but I suspect they were salvaged from some remodel or update. They're obviously used, and old. but they all checked out. I paid for ten fuses, but got eleven. Sweet.

Just for fun, I measured the fuses with a dial caliper, and found that their diameters were within 2/1000" of the nominal diameter of a typical AA battery. Their length, however, exceeded a battery's by 24/1000", which is probably not excessive, since the batteries are under spring tension from flash contacts anyway. I'm sure there will be at least that much play.

My next challenge will be getting a secure, soldered juncture between the fuses and a Quantum Battery 1/ Vivitar 283 power cable. I'll need to use a hacksaw for this operation, since I want to keep as much of the shielded wire available for soldering.

Stay tuned, folks!

Tom Jung - Flash Trendsetter!

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The San Francisco Chronicle July 11, 2016

This photo was taken by Liz Hafalia,  a staff photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle, to illustrate the increasing popularity of Pokemon Go, an on-line game that's getting very popular. I'm not into gaming, but apparently these young people are, and as this photo illustrates, they can play sitting, or walking.

When I first saw this photo, I was was struck by how much the results reflected the approach I've been taking when photographing subjects in bright sunlight. If you look at the gamer walking to the right, you can see how little detail the shadows would have if a flash was not present. It appears to have been feathered (turned away) to prevent the leftmost (nearest) subject from being burnt to a crisp. All in all, a very nice piece of work!

If there a moral to this story, it's that sometimes a flash is the only way you can produce a usable image. Having a flash to add detail to the shadows means you don't have to compromise your exposure. The sky is exposed to give an appealing blue, while the flash gives light back to the underexposed shadows.

I made this photo about four years ago with a Nikon D70 and a shoe-mounted SB-800. I admit that working with cameras in the 24 megapixel range has spoiled me to these six megapixel images made with a camera that is for all intents and purposes is too low in resolution to take on a real assignment. But when coupled with that single speedlight, it make images like this much more reproducible in the newsprint world where I normally work.

So keep a good flash with you at all times. I has saved the day for me more than once!