If the shoe fits....

Out of curiosity last night, I tried to slide my Minolta 220X flash

onto my Canon G2...and it fit! Succumbing to my curiosity once

again, I hit the shutter button and wala...the flash went off! The

only problem seems to be that the camera will not recognize the

presence of a flash and I have to manually adjust the

shutter/apeture for proper exposure.

 

O.K., my question. Technically speaking, am I hurting the camera

using this flash? I was contemplating a 550ex purchase for some

occasional flash use, but will use the Minolta (and manually adjust)

if I'm not going to fry the G2's circuits.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Dave Fenn

Generally-speaking, any flash with a hotshoe-mount will fit on any camera with a hotshoe, and most combinations will actually fire the flash, since the firing connection is standard. What you won't get is all the auto bells and whistles, since these are usually proprietary for each company. So it has to be used manually. That's the way it used to be years ago, and the standard hotshoe is still the same. However, you should be aware that most makes warn of possible damage to the sensitive electronic circuitry in their cameras when using a flash from another company that isn't made to be compatible, due to possible differences in voltage.

You should read this: http://www.botzilla.com/photo/G1strobe.html

Pick up a used Vivitar 283 from a camera store or even a pawnshop. No compatibility problems, real cheap. Putting one mfrs. flash on another one's camera can be dangerous, maybe not the first time, but...

The web site is great. It answered my question, and then some. Thanks for sharing!!

 

Dave Fenn

<b>Wait,</b> Isn't the Minolta Flashesh with a totally different hotshoe? <p>

Anyway, you may want to tstill look at the 550EX or at least the 420EX so you have E-TTL