So, the Gakkenflex is great - charming toy camera look to the pictures, lovely sweet sharp centre and blurred edges, sweet vignetting and the TLR viewfinder focus works brilliantly. The only downside is it's basically a daylight camera - no B setting (I can't be arsed faffing around with the half shutter push business) and no flash synch - so I figured since i'll have to build it, why not build in a flash connection?
If you look at other simple cameras there's not much to the flash - a simple switch that makes contact when the shutters fully open. Using a couple of bits of thin, springy metal salvaged from a Polaroid 104 (which I mangled to make this http://dustscratches.blogspot.com/2010/04/polaroid-hack-poormans-180.html )soldered to the flash plug from the same made this.
The nest step was to fit this in the camera. I drilled a hole for the flash plug in the front of the camera, then played around to work out how to position the two springs so that when the shutter blade was fully open it pushed the two bits of metal together to close the circuit and trigger the flash. It is mostly held in place with blu-tack, I also drilled a hole and screwed a bit in too. Some superglue helps to keep it all firm.
The next photo shows how it all looked when it was in place (sorry for the low quality pics, cameraphone, I don't really do digital, so don't have a decent one).
And here's a sketch to try to explai
n it better...
So that's it really - it works, and it's nice to be able to use the flash!
To hold the flash on the camera I took the head off a mini tripod, which screws in the tripod socket, and super glued a cold flash shoe on. A PC cord with a hotshoe on one end slips into this, and the PC cord into the socket on the camera. A LOMO colour splash seems to give the right exposure for close up portraits.
If you want any more details on this, message me on flickr (address at the top). Oh, and here's a shot to prove it works!
The nest step was to fit this in the camera. I drilled a hole for the flash plug in the front of the camera, then played around to work out how to position the two springs so that when the shutter blade was fully open it pushed the two bits of metal together to close the circuit and trigger the flash. It is mostly held in place with blu-tack, I also drilled a hole and screwed a bit in too. Some superglue helps to keep it all firm.
The next photo shows how it all looked when it was in place (sorry for the low quality pics, cameraphone, I don't really do digital, so don't have a decent one).
And here's a sketch to try to explai
n it better...
So that's it really - it works, and it's nice to be able to use the flash!
To hold the flash on the camera I took the head off a mini tripod, which screws in the tripod socket, and super glued a cold flash shoe on. A PC cord with a hotshoe on one end slips into this, and the PC cord into the socket on the camera. A LOMO colour splash seems to give the right exposure for close up portraits.
If you want any more details on this, message me on flickr (address at the top). Oh, and here's a shot to prove it works!
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