Skip to main content

2026-03-23 Three 2-AA Battery Flash


Here are three automatic electronic flash that are all powered by two AA batteries.








Starting at the left we have the Image CZ65. It has a remarkable assortment of features compared to the other two. It has two Auto ranges as well as manual. 





It tilts.

 It has four zoom positions. 

It might even be thyristerized, able to make many more exposures quickly with the same two AA batteries as the other two flash. On the minus side it doesn’t have a separate PC cable although it does have a socket for a cable on its hotshoe.
















The middle flash is a Sunpak auto 170. It has one auto range and manual. It has a short PC cable held in a grove in the back as well as a separate red button on the back of the hotshoe (facing the operator when mounted on the camera). It also has a hotshoe connector.












The right flash is a Sunpak auto 140. It has one auto range and manual. It shares the PC cable arrangement of the Sunpak 170 but depends on you shorting the tip on a metal post to manually fire the flash. It has a hotshoe connector.





The Sunpak auto 170 is just slightly more powerful than the Sunpak auto 140. The two flash use exactly the same auto f/stop depending on the film speed but as an example the Sunpak auto 170 with ISO 100 film will reach out to 4 m (14 feet) while the Sunpak auto 140 reaches out to 3.5 m (12 feet).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2026-03-14 - History and Evolution of the Kodak Logo

  While working as a junior clerk at the Rochester Savings Bank, George Eastman first began commercial production of dry photographic plates in a rented loft of a building in Rochester, New York in April 1880. In the next few years, Eastman became very successful and expanded the company several times. His company started as the Eastman Dry Plate Company in 1881, later became the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company in 1884, and soon after the Eastman Company in 1889. The last name change occurred in 1892, when the Eastman Kodak Company of New York was organized. The company has been called Eastman Kodak Company ever since.  The word "Kodak" was first registered as a trademark in 1888. The letter “K” had been a favorite of Eastman’s, he is quoted as saying, "I devised the name myself. The letter 'K' had been a favorite with me; it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter. It became a question of trying out a great number of combinations of letters that made word...
Post a Comment
Read more

2026-03-20-Manfrotto monopods

  Sometimes collecting is a matter of persistence.       The Manfrotto “GRUPPO” 434SSB monopod (shown top) showed up one day at my local thrift store. They had a price tag of $25 on it. I had bought the lower Manfrotto Compact MMC3-01 monopod at the same thrift store for $3. So I asked, “Why so much?” They answered their “expert” had found it sold for $200 on the internet. I find experts—who almost never clerk in the thrift store, so are unreachable—hard to deal with. There is also the matter someone might actually pay them $25 for a 2.27 kg (5 pound) aluminum pole, so I decided to let the Gods-of-Collecting decide if I was going to ever own it. For weeks I would pick it up, check the price tag to see if they had come to their senses, and return it to the shelf. I did try various clerks to see if they would lower the price, but they said they were not authorized to change prices. I plodded on, week after week without much hope.         ...
Post a Comment
Read more

2026-03-25 The Kiron 70-150 mm F/4

This Kiron 70-150 mm f/4 Macro1:4MC zoom was made by Kino Precision, Japan in 1980. The same company made both 1.5x and 2x extenders for this lens. It is a lovely design featuring a 52 mm filter size —common to many normal lenses—and a constant f/4 at all zoom positions. The f/stops are full stops from f/4 to f/5.6 and from f/16 to f/22 while the other apertures are half stops apart. FOCAL LENGTH RANGE:          70mm - 150mm [2.1X zoom ratio] DIAGONAL ANGLE OF VIEW: 34.3° @ 70mm - 16.4° @ 150mm   LENS CONSTRUCTION: 13 elements in 9 groups WEIGHT (Olympus OM Mount): 460 g (with hood, front and rear caps) The macro range sets in below the three foot (0.9 m) marked distance at all zoom positions but you only get to the minimum 1:4 ratio at 150 mm. Macro starts around a 1:8 macro range at 70 mm. This is the only lens I have ever collected that has the original price sticker on the rear cap. At least I assume it is the original price sticker… It ha...
Post a Comment
Read more