Review on Improved SX-70 Flashbar by Polaroid Originals by Sandra Johnson

The Mint Flashbar 2 is designed for SX-70 cameras and fits into the top of the camera. Flash drives used to be used once (10 shots) and had to be thrown away. and the reusable ones were very large. Mint introduced a high power mini flash. which has its advantages and disadvantages. It has 3 modes: flash off (but PC sync output for external flashes), half power (for using 600 film with no filter) and full power (for using SX-70 film). My original use was to use the PC out sync feature (uses a 2.5mm jack instead of a standard PC sync cable). Unfortunately, the stock SX-70 flash adjusts aperture based on focus distance, so this isn't very useful unless you modify your SX-70 flash to only shoot at F8. The flash at full power works as expected. although it really surprised me. This allows 600 film to be used without the need for an ND filter (either on the lens or on the film packaging). This usually works very well (I was surprised!) but doesn't get you enough exposure to the sun. Any bright shots will still be overexposed, so a neutral density filter is required. Indoors and in the shade. works perfectly. This allows the SX-70 to use a wide range of 600 slides on the SX-70 (e.g. slides with special borders). The main drawback. how slow it is This thing just eats batteries (2x AAA) - I found myself changing batteries every 20 shots or so. Loading times are also very slow, sometimes taking 20 seconds or more to "ready". and if you take a picture before it's ready, the camera will fire without a flash, giving you a badly underexposed picture. This should have been fixed in Mint Flash 2 but is still an issue. I would have preferred a little more if needed if they could offer a higher refresh rate.