Cheap Camera Accessories

This week I finally caved and bought a cheap little slave flash trigger. It was about $12 on eBay. And amazingly enough it does work with the old Vivitar flashes we stored with the Canon AE-1. It works on the principle of setting off the remote flash when it senses a flash from something else, ie the S3. I don't know how long it's going to take me to figure out how to work the S3 and the remote flash so they're firing at the same time. My next purchase will probably be an adapter tube, and a polarizing filter, and possibly a flash bracket. I'm holding off new camera purchases until I decide if I'm getting a DSLR or not. The picture quality just keeps screaming to me. The Cokin P series of filters is intriguing me though, as I could use it on any later camera with just an adapter ring. And I recently discovered the true use of Neutral Density Filters. They easily make it so you can do very long water shots in sunlight, without overexposing, so I might have to try some of those too. The helpful tutorials that led me to these ideas can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/canon_s3_is_how_to/discuss/72157603671169448/ and here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/canon_s3_is_how_to/discuss/72157603671619056/

Canon AE-1 Update

Well. It works, and I remember why I hate film cameras. 24 shots two nice ones. Anyone want a Canon AE-1 with some nice lenses?

Canon AE-1 Repair

So a few weeks ago I finally got to play lightly with my mother's old manual cameras. We found the AE-1 and a Sears camera. Both were declared broken a number of years ago, and left to slowly cook in the attic. Along with some nice lens. I originally went up there looking for filters, which apparently we don't have any of. Either way I forgot about it until a few days ago when I was considering buying a broken digital camera off eBay to take it apart. After a few hours it occur ed to me I already had two broken cameras I could take apart. The AE-1 wouldn't advance, or let you press down the shutter, but otherwise looked okay. And it had been stored wearing a lens, so there wasn't much dust on it. The battery in it had worked, because the light meter functioned. But I had yanked the battery when we decided it was broken. We pulled all the batteries for recycling. So I took as many screws out of the AE-1 as I could, and found what could have been the problem. Subsequent web searches also pointed to what I had fiddled with likely being the problem. However I needed a new battery to make sure. Popped in the new battery, and like magic the dead camera seems to function fine. I am going to replace the light seals (which have decomposed to a black tarry mess, then try a roll of film to see how it goes. It has some nice lenses though I think the base 50 mm is broken, as the aperture inside it seems stuck halfway open and doesn't seem to open all the way up. Most of the lenses also need to be cleaned. It looks like the auto winder doesn't quite work anymore, but it might just be since there isn't any film in it. Both flashes we had seem to still work, and refresh amazingly fast on eneloop rechargeables. I'll see how it goes. It has taken some excellent pictures in the past.