Since flash brackets have come up, I may as well mention some things we've come across...
The flash flip brackets have the advantage of keeping the flash over the lens. They also keep the flash's rectangle of light in alignment with the camera's rectangular image area. This works great with smaller flash units, and we've used Sunpak 383 / Vivitar 285 sized flashes successfully with the flash flip brackets. We've also used some Minolta flashes successfully. The 383 and 285 are fairly small and lightweight, and the Minoltas lock on nicely with their great flash shoe. The major problem we have is with a Metz 54 on a Pentax exension cable ( Promaster brand cable, and we have several ). The flash is heavy and eventually wiggles loose from the hot shoe mount on the flash flip, even when it is tightened down as hard as we dare go with the plastic screw on the hotshoe. Try connecting your flash to a hotshoe, then wiggle it off by twisting slightly left and right while pulling off gently. The big digital flash loses its digital connection long before it loses its large center pin fire connection, so you get a bunch of photos with bad flash settings before it finally stops firing, soon after which it falls off entirely. This happened to us, causing great frustration before we figured out what was happening. The solution so far has been some plastic zip ties, one between the hot shoe extension connector and the heavy Metz. This zip tie keeps the flash from coming off the hotshoe. Another one is used to keep the hot shoe on the flash bracket, although this one probably isn't needed. Supposedly other brands might have a little pin which sticks down to keep the flash from sliding off. I know the Minolta would never do this. I wish Pentax could come up with something. Maybe they have. I see an empty hole on the hotshoe on the DS, but I havn't seen a Pentax brand flash up close to know if it has a pin to fit into this hole to keep the flash on. If so, there will probably be ten responses in a few minutes telling me so. I do know that the Metz 54 doens't have any pin to fit into this hole. A camera rotating bracket keeps the flash upright all the time but rotates the camera. The flash is still over the lens, but the rectangle of light stays horizontal even when the camera goes vertical. This doesn't take full advantage of the flash coverage, but it does reduce the amount of strain on the flash to hotshoe connection. We might go this route. I also have a bracket which is a folding L bracket, found in many local camera shops. Metal, made in Japan, click stops at several rotations, and the hot shoe tilts. You could put a flash onto this bracket and have the flash up high and slightly to the left for horizontal format, the click stop the bracket to rotate the flash way to the left which puts it far over the lens for a vertical. You can also click stop it to 45 degrees to the left for a compromise. When you are done it folds up into your camera bag. The problem I had with this bracket is that the tilting hot shoe would flop over with a heavier flash unit, so I disassembled the handle, drilled out the spring loaded tilt, and put in a pop-rivet. End of tilt problems. The 383 can be rotated and bounced any direction anyhow, so I didn't need any tilt. This bracket is used for the secondary camera for a wedding processional, with a simple on camera flash. The flash flip bracket is used for the main processional camera with both a flash and a radio transmitter for the second light. It's great for what it is, but it flops around a lot when you are using the secondary camera. The click stop L bracket just stays how you set it. Maybe someone will add a click stop to a flash flip bracket some day. All of which is to say that a heavy flash unit doens't necessarily go well on a flash flip bracket. I am beginning to wish that we had gotten a handle mount flash instead of the 54. For the curious, I keep the Metz 54 on auto mode using its built in sensor, instead of TTL. Fairly good results, and my wife knows how to dial the flash up and down with the flash control, or dial the background up and down with the shutter speed. The 54 does follow the camera's aperature changes, unlike the 383s and 285s which I use. Brian -- Brian Dunn Photographic http://www.bdphotographic.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
