I collect old parts for a junk pile cameras and today I found an old Sunpak Auto 121C flash at the thrift shop.
When it comes to cameras, the local thrift shop isn’t often a good place to go picking. They’re like a magnet for all sorts of broken junk, most of which are really cheap plastic 35mm toys.
Occasionally you will find some decent Olympus consumer film cameras, but that’s because they don’t know what they have. Once I even found a Olympus Trip 35 only it wasn’t passing the red flag test and looked like it needed a lot of work.
Today the kids and I were there and while they searched for inexpensive toys, I saw the flash. The batteries inside had leaked but somehow hadn’t corroded anything on the inside. It was $9 so I took a chance and took it home. Success! I put a fresh pair of double AA batteries and the flash fires.
Compared to modern camera flashes, it’s a simple no frills model. But my film cameras are at least 37 years old, so it’s exactly what I wanted. With a little elbow grease it cleaned up really well.
This was a good find. The flash is small and works so I plan to take it to get-togethers and shoot off at least one roll of film.