One advantage of vintage gear is that everything associated with it is likely to be cheap, often very cheap meaning that you try things out that you wouldn’t normally consider. So, to my purchase of a Nikon F4, I have added a medium quality zoom lens Nikkor 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 AF-D (the review in the link pretty much confirms my own thoughts about the lens and its performance though I feel a little less generous – it only gets acceptably sharp after f5.6 and I would not describe its zooming action as at all smooth, nevertheless its a convenient lens to keep on the camera) – and today, just out of the box with fresh batteries, a Nikon Speedlight SB-24. This was a flash unit that was designed to work extremely closely with, specifically, the Nikon F4. It measures for the correct exposure through the lens during the exposure and as you change settings on the camera such as the aperture or the focal length of the lens the flashgun makes its own internal changes through its clever connections in the hotshoe. (it doesn’t seem to do any of this when fixed to a more modern Nikon like my D810 unfortunately). I’m yet to see the results of a few headshots that I’ve just taken, of course, until I finish the film and get it developed. Youtube offers some useful tutorials on the effect of various directions of pointing the flash head, along with the effect of fixing a white card to the top of the unit – which I have tried as seen in the picture here.

Upto now I have never been interested in using flash and most photographs that I have seen that do use it, even fill-in flash that is supposed to be subtle, have been the exact opposite of the kind of pictures that I am interested in taking. However, I can see that it is possible to use flash carefully and this speedlight/camera combination makes it particularly possible. My first assumption that you point a flash unit directly at (the face of) your subject was clearly (terribly) wrong – that’s why these units can tilt upwards and swivel from side to side of course – so that was my ignorance. I’m going to keep experimenting.
I’m expecting a waist level finder in the next week or so.