Polaroid Question

[John Cahill]

Each year I have been tasked to take pictures of the kids in costume at our neighborhood association Halloween Party.
Coming year I would like to use my strobe with an older, auto exposure Polaroid. Does anyone know of a way to alter the auto shutter so it will fire at a fixed shutter speed? It seems to synch ok with the my strobe, but I get messed up exposures because the shutter stays open longer than necessary.

Yes, I know, I have the appropriate flash gun--but I have no wish to use up vintage M-3 flashbulbs to use it.

Can anyone help?

[Ralph Barker]

Switch to 8x10 Poaroids sitting behind a Copal shutter? ;)

I doubt that the little Polaroid camera can be adjusted to anything beyond its standard setting. In fact, I doubt that the auto-exposure circuit is even seeing the strobe, as it was designed to work with ambient light and/or the longer-duration flash bulbs.

[BrianShaw]

Vintage M-type flash bulbs are dime-a-dozen (well, not really... but figuratively speaking) on the auction site. The competition on them is a lot less than for the larger size bulbs. They are still so plentiful that you should not be concerned about using them.