I got a few emails asking if they could see a picture of the flash as there apparently aren’t that many of them floating around the internet. Never one to deny an opportunity to take a picture, even if it is really old gear, here we are, the moldy oldy Vivitar Thrystor 550 FD:
Ain’t nothin wrong with an old flash.
A while back my dad opened up his old camera case from the 70’s and asked me if there was anything I wanted. I stupidly said no, figuring there wasn’t anything worth while in there.
Then I took a look and found a couple old Vivitar flashes, strictly manual of course. One has controllable power and the other is full power only. They worked great, so I put them to use.
The single-power flash works great when in a pinch. You can easily lower the power by moving it further away (if you can) or knocking down the output with some ND gels. There’s no better flash than a free flash!