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$42 flash

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2007.08.20

I'm feeling rather pleased with myself. I've managed to "make" a flash unit for my digital camera. The ingredients were:

1x dSLR with a hot-shoe but no PC port (grrr)

1x existing flash unit (no swivel, no tilt, no zoom, no PC port: grrr)

1x hot shoe to PC adapter

1x ball-and-socket hot shoe to tripod screw-mount adapter

1x tripod screw mount adapter

1x PC to hot shoe adapter.

I plugged them together in this order (top to bottom):

flash unit

PC-to-hot shoe adapter

tripod screw-mount to hot-shoe adapter

ball-and-socket hot-shoe to tripod screw-mount adapter

hot shoe to PC adapter

camera

The two PC adapters are connected with a PC cable.

Both of the hot-shoe/PC adapters are insulating. This means that they do not conduct the charge passing through the active hot-shoe interface to the other hot-shoe interface. This is important because I'm using that functionality to prevent the flash from frying my dSLR.

Anyway, this is what it looks like.

Not only do I have an adapter that lets me connect any flash of indeterminate voltage to my dSLR, but I had full tilt and swivel functionality from my existing flash.

I got the idea from the Strobist blog, which I've been wading through of late. I've decided to start using an external flash with my dSLR because I haven't been happy with the in-camera flash: it's too weak and it can't be effectively used in automatic mode with the manual-focus lenses I've got. What's more, some of the photography I've been doing demands more than the in-camera flash's feeble efforts when it comes to fill flash. So here I am.

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.