My girlfriends dad handed me this old handheld flash of his. It's pretty powerful, seems more powerful than my 580ex, and uses only 4 AA batteries. He got it in the mid 1980's. It's full manual, but I've kinda got everything figured out, exposure isn't too hard but it doesn't have AF assist sadly haha.



My question is does anyone know anything about this brand? This model is called the "Popular 3800" and what is the difference between a flash like this and a shoe mounted one? The bracket allows me to mount it about 5 inches away from the camera...I dunno if that makes a difference in pictures because i haven't been able to fully test it yet.

you might want to do some research to make sure that flash won't damage your camera before you start using it.....

Like Josh says, the sync voltage on some of those older flash units is 300 volts. That's enough to fry the circuits of modern DSLRs whose sync voltage is only around 5 volts.

Better check to make sure.

dang, i can't find any info at all regarding this flash. Hmm, in that case, I probably should just give it back. I've used for about 100 shots with no problem, but i don't want anything to happen to slowly break on my camera because of it. thanks for the help guys

Before you give it back why not check first...

Follow the (pretty simple) directions on this page to figure out the real trigger voltage.

You can also look for a "safe sync" (Wein) that will isolate your camera from the hgh voltage if its there.