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[Aphototaker]

I am not very familiar with flashes. I have a Canon 380 EX that I have used with an Elan 50e and with a G5, but only in E-TTL mode. I used an old flash with a Canon FT QL camera several years ago but I don't remember the specifics, besides I was kid

[David_nebenzahl]

Why are you bothering with this stuff? Why not just put a damn flash on the camera, take some pictures with it and confirm that it works? (The ground everywhere should be thick with cheap flash units.) If it doesn't, then you can worry about flash s

[Rick_oleson]

An X-sync contact is not a very complicated device: it consists of 2 pieces of metal that touch each other while the shutter is open.  One of these pieces is wired to the rail of the flash shoe, and the other is wired to the center contact.  That's al

[Aphototaker]

Okay. I was hoping to be able to verify this without a flash; I don't have one yet.
 
Though I am looking for a flash, I haven't yet made up my mind which one to get which would be most versatile (recall that I am not very familiar with these([

[Rick_oleson]

This sounds like driving east and going 24,000 miles to get to the town 5 miles to your west.  It may work but I can't think of a more difficult way to accomplish a simpler task.  Any flash with a hot shoe foot and a PC cable will work on virtually ev

[Aphototaker]

ha ha ... I understand your car analogy. But I don't have a car yet, so driving the short distance is out of the question

 
 
$5, eh? Well, if you say so. But backgro

[Mndean]

The Vivitar 283 is one that can be problematic depending on its age. The older ones can put out a high voltage, which can be deadly to DSLRs and other cameras with sensitive circuits. Later 283s don't put out high voltage. Problem is, there are prec

[Tom_cheshire]

This reminds me of the guy on usenet a few years ago who was asking where to find the battery compartment in an SLR that didn't use a battery.  When told it didn't need a battery to operate his response was That's impossible.  How does it work then?

[Aphototaker]

Yes, I am a complete newbie as far as the inner working of flashes and their protocols with cameras are concerned (isn't PC still an undefined or un-disclosed 'standard'?).
 
Tom, I have had a question a few number of times that goes like t

[Agno3]

You can also build/buy a small device that will lower the voltage the camera receives through the contacts.  Wein makes one; it fits in the hot shoe and has a pc socket on the back too, to it can work via hot shoe or pc cord.
 
It contains a small

[Rick_oleson]

It is just that the phrase you used, the voltage in the flash that passes through the sync terminals, I have never come across this in electrical engineering. Current passes, voltage builds up. Sorry for the nitpick, but this a very strange way to

[M_currie]

For a hot shoe flash in a cold shoe, you can just put a little piece of tape or plastic between the center pin and the shoe.  
 
You can easily check that your sync is synced by firing the flash with back open and no lens on. Hold it a little away f

[Tom_cheshire]

Ok, PC is short for Prontor-Compur (the two dominant shutter companies during the 1950s) when the PC flash contact was adopted as the standard nipple (as I call it) to which you connect any flash (electronic or flash bulb) by using a wire from the flash

[Mndean]

For a cold shoe (one that has no sync contacts), just get an aftermarket hotshoe that slides into the cold shoe and hook the integral wire to the X-sync socket (some flashes like the Vivitar 283 have a hard-to-find X-sync connector, so it's easier t

[Aphototaker]

Tom, you didn't confuse me. I spent some time today reading some literature on flash photography and technology and you have summarized the relevant parts to this discussion very well. Your post actually made the perspective much clearer. Thanks.