Provision is made for time exposures with the focal plane shutter by means of an additional curtain opening the full width of the picture area. Electronic flash and types M and F can be used at this setting. This is accomplished by pressing the exposure button twice as quickly as possible.

The setting will show as T in the window. Now we push the shutter release, the flashlight or strobe will be triggered just as the curtain has completely uncovered the film area. The second pressure on the trigger is to close the curtain again and should be done as quickly as possible to avoid fogging of the film.... We have tested this procedure and it will work when ambient light is low. (Likely ambient will be low. Any readout of the meter indicating a longer exposure than 1/15 at f2.5 has to be considered as low)

Ideal situation would be to sync without cables, laying all around the working space. The solution is remote triggering!
Devices for the remote triggering of flash units fall into two categories, infrared (IR) and radio frequency (RF). Of the two, RF devices are the more versatile. With RF systems, the transmitter and receiver don’t need to be in line of sight of one other, they perform equally well in bright sunlight and a darkened studio, the distance over which they operate reliably is greater than IR systems, and RF systems offer more available channels.

This cable on the left is the "pièce de résistance".
Hard to get on Ebay or at your local Mall. Unfortunately this rare cable is the one to look for.
Be warned, cables offered are brittle most of the time and can result in severe short-circuits !!
If you are lucky to find a decent one, you will notice it has one tip for the sync on the FP (Bi-post) and the other end a PC male tip.
To connect to a sync cable however we need a PC female (If you do not know what the "female" part means, I am not going to be the one to tell you. Think about it.) on the other end....There are little connectors (PC male - 3x PC female), but this is not a very secure connection! If all fails, the cable can be ordered though at ParamountCord. You will need a cable with tips # 13 and # 14.
NOTE:
About cable tips - Male is called plug, whereas Female also is called socket!

If you have access to a Studio Flash installation, you will need a longer cable though.
Those units all have different connections but the one to the camera is always PC male. Now you will understand why the cable above is preferred, while having a female PC tip.

When we have the proper cable it is no problem to connect and sync the FP shutter with a small flash unit on top of the camera..
This little unit can trigger larger units when they have slave cells attached.
The biggest problem if we want to work wide open (f 2.5) is to minimize the output of the flash units.
You need a flash-meter to control the light.

Cables around can be a hassle. First approach is the use of the Minolta receiver/trigger.
The gadget receives a IR signal from the Minolta flashmeter IV and triggers the flash in the non-cable mode.
Without any cable we can thus measure the flash output with just one push on the button. However, we have still to connect the sync of the focal plane shutter with one of our strobes...

A more elegant solution can be the use of an IR remote trigger on the camera, connected with a cable to the FP sync.
When we will trip the shutter on T, the unit will send an IR burst to the strobes. The slaves on the strobes or smaller units with a coupled slave cell will flash with a slight delay. (can be safely ignored.)
To measure the light, we need the help of a third hand or we have to connect the meter with a cable. One can't have all :-)

Complete cable freedom can be experienced with a Radio Remote Control.
Coming in several flavors (1 - 4 channels) and prices (Euro 60 -360). You will need a receiver and also a transmitter. The last mentioned has to be mounted on the camera, whereas the receiver is connected with one of the leading strobes (MainLight). A one-channel radio remote control set will do just as fine for our Speed Graphic.

Well, actually I have 2x 500Ws and 1 1000Ws Elinchrom units, thus the best choice was to get the SkyPort Universal Radio Remote Control from Elinchrom. The Elinchrom Strobe units use the special AMPHENOL PLUG to screw in. The universal set came complete with the amphenol jack. That's why ! Almost forgot, the Skyport is very unobtrusive and very low profile also!

Advantages Radio Remote Control

  
•   No cables around to trip on.
•   Reliable triggering of your strobes.
•   Signal will go through walls and glass.
•   Working up to 25 meter and some.
•   No disturbance from cell-phones and the like.

The Skyport plug is connected with the FP sync post, thus from now on the Speed is wireless in Studio environments....
Finally, I have to adapt some cables for my smaller flash units.

On the left you can get an impression of the actual size of the units.
The smallest one is the transmitter with a hot-shoe and plug to X-contact. The other one is the receiver.
Weight is only 30 gram for the tranmitter and 50 gram for the receiver.
NOTE: It speaks for itself, I did not buy this unit for the Speed Graphic exclusively....

On the left an example, shot sometime ago with a borrowed transmitter in the open.
It is nice to control the light....
As you have noticed already, this image has been shopped recently just a little.

NOTE on the Image above: Not what you think..!

Giving the Finger

Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous weapon was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew" (or "pluck yew"). Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, "See, we can still pluck yew! "PLUCK YEW!" Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'F', and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter.

It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird".

And yew thought yew knew everything.

Fingering a popular myth.

(Update, from one of our readers)

According to a popular myth the "two-fingers salute" and/or V sign derives from the gestures of longbowmen fighting in the English army at the battle of Agincourt. The myth claims that the French cut off two fingers on the right hand of captured archers and that the gesture was a sign of defiance by those who were not mutilated. (This false etymology has also given rise to an alternative name for the gesture, which can also be known as flicking an "Archers Salute" or just "Archers" as in "He just flicked me an Archers!") The website Snopes, however, shows that medieval warriors had no interest in capturing common archers that could not be held for ransom, preferring instead to simply kill such prisoners. Furthermore, mutilating a prisoner to stop them from using a bow would not make sense, since killing them would stop them from ever serving the enemy again. There is also the fact that contemporary accounts of the battle make no references to the French mutilating their prisoners by cutting off fingers from their hands. The first definitive known reference to the V sign is in the works of François Rabelais, a French satirist of the 1500s. )

The belief that the V sign originated among archers might have its origin in the work of the historian Jean Froissart (c. 1337–c. 1404), who died before the Battle of Agincourt took place. In his Chronicles, he recounts a story of the English waving their fingers at the French during a siege of a castle, however he makes no reference to which fingers were used meaning that this is not evidence of the origin of the V sign.

The "two-fingers salute" is certainly older than Agincourt. It appears in the Macclesfield Psalter MS 1-2005 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, believed to be produced in about 1330, Folio 130 Recto, CDROM p261, being made by a glove on the extended nose of a marginalia depicting a human headed hybrid beast, ridden by a person playing the pipe and tabor. The Psalter marginalia have many absurdities and obscenities so the traditional meaning of this gesture would not be out of place here. As the gesture is made by a disembodied glove accidental positioning of the hand may be ruled out.