DPReview.com is closing April 10th - Find out more

Vintage flash on a 400D

Started Mar 14, 2013 | Discussions thread
Lemming51
Lemming51 Forum Pro • Posts: 15,278
Re: 'different hot shoes'

karl mohr wrote:

Also, are hot shoes for the Nikon, Canon, Olympus, and Pentax all different? Were they in the film days as well?

In film days...

I think only Minolta (now Sony) had a unique, proprietary hotshoe shape.  All others used an industry standard hot- (and cold-) shoe/foot.  The shape and size is standarized, as is the large center electrical contact for the fire signal in the hotshoe.  A "cold" shoe lackes the electrical trigger contact so the flash is triggered by connecting the camera and speedlite via a (also standard) PC sync cord.

Where each brand differed was in the implementation of the extra electrical contacts in the shoe that communicated TTL autoexposure and other information.  A fully manual or auto-thyrister type speedlite can be fired from any hotshoe, but for TTL flash one had to have a speedlite designed for the specific camera brand.

-- hide signature --

Unapologetic Canon Apologist

 Lemming51's gear list:Lemming51's gear list
Canon EOS 40D Canon EF 50mm F1.8 II Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM +5 more
Keyboard shortcuts:
FForum PPrevious NNext WNext unread UUpvote SSubscribe RReply QQuote BBookmark MMy threads
Color scheme? Blue / Yellow