mbarrick | It finally happened

In all my years now of club photography, often rather drunk, I had not until yesterday ever dropped any of my gear. In bending down to pick up a dropped flyer that

cheekydevil had handed me, the strap on my "new" stereo camera chose that moment, 51 years after manufacture, to give up the ghost. The camera was unharmed — it's made entirely out of metal and I'd have to drop it considerably farther than the half-metre or so it fell from in order to hurt it. My Cullmann MD-40 flash, however... part of it remained in the hotshoe, and the rest was on the floor. Thinking that it was damaged beyond repair it put me in a rotten mood and I only stayed long enough to have one drink and make a few images.

I learned after the fact that the part that broke is actually a replaceable adaptor. The flash itself is a SCA-300 format flash (I had no idea about this standard until last night, I guess that makes this a "learning experience"). I have bids on eBay for a new SCA-300 to hotshoe adaptor as well as an SCA-300 optical slave trigger. It seems like the optical slave trigger is in the bag as no one else is bidding on it. I have some competition for the replacement adaptor, but it's not that important. The optical trigger will allow me to use the flash for the purpose I bought it for, the hotshoe adaptor is just a bonus and there are others listed that I could go for if I lose this auction. In the meantime, I've learned my lesson and bought a cheap-like-borscht manual flash for use on the stereo camera in the clubs and for my will-inevitably-be-knocked-over reflector that I use at Sin City. I'll be putting a new not-going-to-snap-on-me-so-who-cares-if-it-doesn't-match nylon strap on the stereo camera and all is well.

I've yet to finish the roll that is in the stereo camera so it will be a while before I have the first stereographs. Yup, this thing has me shooting with film again — the last images I made with film were from this set of photographs at Sanctuary in 2001 using my old SLR, which like the stereo camera dates from the 1950's.

By way of a teaser, I used my DSLR to test exposures. The images from the stereo camera should be similar to the one below, only they'll be 3-D :-)