How to sync external flash w/350XT

I'm very happy with my Digital Rebel XT. I happen to actually prefer the
smaller size relative to the 20D.

There is only one significant feature the Rebel is missing, and that is
a PC socket for external flash sync.

There must be some part I can buy to fix this ... does somebody make a
hot shoe PC socket adapter? Or some other gizmo to fix this problem.

On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:11:56 -0800, fishfry
wrote:

I'm very happy with my Digital Rebel XT. I happen to actually prefer the
smaller size relative to the 20D.

There is only one significant feature the Rebel is missing, and that is
a PC socket for external flash sync.

There must be some part I can buy to fix this ... does somebody make a
hot shoe PC socket adapter? Or some other gizmo to fix this problem.


something like this?

http://www.pictureline.com/category.php?mid=1&cid=187

or

http://www.kjsl.com/~dave/multi-flash.html

fishfry wrote:
I'm very happy with my Digital Rebel XT. I happen to actually prefer
the smaller size relative to the 20D.

There is only one significant feature the Rebel is missing, and that
is a PC socket for external flash sync.

There must be some part I can buy to fix this ... does somebody make a
hot shoe PC socket adapter? Or some other gizmo to fix this problem.

Use a remote flash slave unit. Fires the remote flash when the built-in
flash fires. Pretty cheap.

"fishfry" wrote in message
...
I'm very happy with my Digital Rebel XT. I happen to actually prefer the
smaller size relative to the 20D.

There is only one significant feature the Rebel is missing, and that is
a PC socket for external flash sync.

There must be some part I can buy to fix this ... does somebody make a
hot shoe PC socket adapter? Or some other gizmo to fix this problem.

You can get generic hotshoe to PC adapter for under $20 from photo stores.

If you have to work with old strobes that has high trigger voltage, then get
a "safe hotshoe pc flash adapter" (use google) which would reduce the
trigger voltage to 6V for the camera.

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:28:33 +0100, Gisle Hannemyr
wrote:

"Dennis Pogson" writes:

Use a remote flash slave unit. Fires the remote flash when the
built-in flash fires. Pretty cheap.

Actually, a plain optical slave will fire whem the 350 XT's
pre-flash fires. Pretty useless.

(There exists special slave units that can be programmed to ignore the
pre-flash, but reports on their reliability is mixed..)

Really? I haven't seen this to any significant extent. Remember that
there are reports of poor reliability on just about all man-made
devices, to include pet rocks.
There are lots of flashes made specifically to work with digital; they
can be set to work on the first, second, third, etc. flash.
The only useless ones (for digital) are the older flashes designed
before digital became popular (technology-wise, a long time ago).
There a lot of them still being sold, though.

--
Bill Funk
replace "g" with "a"

In article ,
fishfry wrote:

I'm very happy with my Digital Rebel XT. I happen to actually prefer the
smaller size relative to the 20D.

There is only one significant feature the Rebel is missing, and that is
a PC socket for external flash sync.

There must be some part I can buy to fix this ... does somebody make a
hot shoe PC socket adapter? Or some other gizmo to fix this problem.


Thanks to everyone who responded.

Here's the gadget I ended up with ...

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...st&A=details&Q
=&sku=245292&is=REG&addedTroughType=search

As someone mentioned, you can't use old flash units, such as my Vivitar
285, with modern cameras unless you use a "safe sync" adapter to step
down the trigger voltage. The best explanation is at
http://www.botzilla.com/photo/strobeVolts.html. But the bottom line is,
don't do it.

Someone else pointed me to Canon's adapters and cords that pass the TTL
signals from the camera to the flash. Fortunately I don't need or even
want TTL, but it's good to know they're available.

I'm thinking that these days you don't even need to bother with flash
metering. With film you have to carefully calculate flash exposure. But
with digital you just play around till it looks good in the LCD, then
fix it up in Photoshop. Not a purist point of view but good enough till
those Vogue assignments start rolling in.

This was an interesting learning experience.