Kodak Signet 50 Electronic Flash Unit Mod

I love the design of Kodak Signet 50. Like most other cameras at the time, it has a metal-casted body with black leather finish. What’s special to me is that it has a black plastic frame on top of the lens that hosts the viewfinder and light meter. From the front, it really looks like a robot to me, a geek robot. ( Robot! Good!) The bummer is that this camera was produced before commercial electronic flash was introduced to the public. I did some research on my own and find out the only flash unit that works with this one is the the original side lamp flash unit. I also went to the 2nd floor on B&H for help since they had saved me many times in the past on various camera related projects. The guy from B&H told me the only solution is to use 800 speed films ( very cheap actually, about 3 dollars/roll ).

This is what I think, if this batteryless camera is able to trigger a lamp flash unit, there must be a way I can have it trigger an electronic one. On the side of Signet 50, there are three connectors for the lamp flash, after a few tests, I realized the bottom 2 connectors work as an on-off switch, when shutter is pressed, it connects and triggers the lamp to flash. I open the back where I normally load the film, I can actually see the bottom two connectors extended to a mechanism in the center, I am certain these two connectors are the one. Now, all I need to do is to find the right electronic flash unit to mod/hack.

 

I found a few cheap electronic flash units from Ebay and from the weekend fleet market on 17th street and 6th AV about 5 dollars each and has different numbers of contact pins underneath. Here is a list of stuff I need before I start the experiment:

1. An electronic flash unit, must have a “test button”

2. Solder and solder iron

3. Screw driver

4. Some scrap wires

Steps:

1. Unscrew the flash unit and locate where the test button is on the circuit board.

2. Identify the two connectors on each end of the switch for the test button, solder a wire to each of the two connectors. Make sure the wires are long enough to touch the side connectors on the camera.

3. Now if the the flash light is charged, it should flash by just joining two wires together. ( Make sure the flash unit is dismounted, some models disable the test button when it is mounted)

4. Get to the contact pins underneath the flash unit and remove those pins.

5. Now find a way to connect the two wires to the side connectors on the camera, I just solder them together for testing, I can also use some sort of connectors in between for different occasions.

6. Load a film, and give it a shot, the flash should work fine.

During the research, I realized there are different kinds of flash syncs, so I am not really sure at this point what sync is better than another for Signet 50. Below is an example using the hack flash!