Speedlights & Speedlites

Introduction

Once upon a time I pushed a thumb-sized red button and exposed a roll of black and white film. Several months later I retrieved an envelope filled with postcard sized pictures of my friends marching in a Boy Scout parade. Memories forged a lifetime ago. In fact not only do I still have most of those photographs but I still cherish the original camera, a marvel of modern technology, the Kodak^[1] Brownie Starflex. Not only was it a symbol of a decades-long race to permanently capture an image on paper, but it was small, light, and foolproof. Somewhere in my attic I have also saved the silver dish into which I inserted golf ball sized flashbulbs that miraculously “focused” the sun for the briefest fraction of a second. In a relatively ...