Triggering options for Sony multi-shoe

<p>I'm looking for some triggering options that will allow me to trigger a manual strobe remotely from a Sony A6000. I recently purchased a starter lighting kit built around a Godox/Flashpoint/Bolt/Interfit 360ws strobe. It's nice... basic and manual, but that is what I want.</p>

<p>The issue is triggering. The kit comes with a wireless controller that can trigger the unit and control power levels. Physically, it kind of fits in the A6000 shoe...but it is flaky. Unless it is positioned just so, the center pin just does not make contact with the shoe and, as a result, the flash does not fire reliably.</p>

<p>After doing some digging, it seems this is not a one-off problem but a more general characteristic of using traditional shoe mounted devices attached to the Sony multi-shoe. So, I am looking for an alternative.</p>

<ul>

<li>The trigger would work with a sync chord, but unless I am missing something, the A6000 does not have a sync port.</li>

<li>The flash has an optical slave so I could use either the pop-up flash or my little nissin set at lowest power to trigger it.</li>

<li>I can just have patience and fiddle with the positioning of the trigger in the shoe - it's not that difficult, its just annoying.</li>

</ul>

<p>Anyone have some other good suggestions?</p>

<p>Can you not buy a Sony to normal shoe adapter?</p>

<p>The hotshoe was introduced about 45 years ago to circumvent these stupid compatibility issues, but unfortunately first Minolta and now Sony have decided to ignore common-sense.</p>

<p>Actually the MIS(guided) looks just a little deeper than a standard hotshoe. Maybe some adhesive tape on the top of the trigger shoe would pack it out a little and fix the problem?</p>

<p>There may be an issue with using the popup or dedicated flash to optically fire studio strobes. Most digital cameras use pre-flashes for their TTL metering. Those pre-flashes will set off the main flash too early, before the shutter has opened and result in no flash being captured.</p>

<p>The issue is definitely the depth of the MIS shoe. You cannot (and should not) shove a standard mount device all the way in. I think you would damage the signal pins Sony has located there. The net effect of this, though, is that it becomes more difficult to align your standard mount device in the shoe in a way that signalling and ground connections are made properly.</p>

<p>I did some more playing around with it today, though, and I think I may have solved my problem without resorting to any extremes. It requires mounting the trigger in a relatively quiet environment. The contact pin is spring loaded and if you are listening carefully you can hear it pop into place. I find that if I do that each time I put the trigger in the shoe, then lock it down, the trigger fires reliably.</p>

<p>As for optical triggering, I will definitely do some experiments to see if the pop-up presents the issue you mentioned. In the mean time, if I use optical triggering I think I could use my Nissin i40 set at 1/128 power in manual mode and avoid any TTL pre-flash confusion.</p>

<p>However, for the benefit of others who may face a similar issue, I did do a little digging and found nothing for any MIS to ISO adapters - and that kind of makes some sense as the MIS shoe is "supposed" to accept ISO devices. I did find a reference, though, to a company called Tavor that supposedly offers MIS/Nikon and MIS/Canon adapters. They are apparently sold through (but not by) Amazon; but the deliver time was several weeks.</p>

<p>I also considered piggybacking adapters. I do have the MIS/Minolta shoe adapter and there are still a number of Minolta to ISO solutions out there. I may still consider this as it is a way to get a PC sync port; which may come in handy at some time in the future.</p>

Radeo, you seem to be under the wrong impression that Sony mirrorless cameras with hot shoe are of Minolta iISO type which Sony used on most of its SLR cameras (translucent mirror ones included).

Sony introduced "MIS" (multi interface shoe) on its later SLR cameras which in the shape of ISO shoe similar to Nikon & Canon; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi_Interface_Shoe .

<p>Parv, I'm well aware that the Sony MIS shoe isn't the same as the Minolta "shoe", but Sony perversely continued to use that pattern when they took over Minolta's camera production, and have now introduced yet another non-standard flash interface.</p>

<p>If I owned a Sony camera and didn't need the "interface" part of the hotshoe, I think I'd be tempted to just stuff it with Blu-Tack, tape, or something similar to prevent a standard hotshoe being shoved in too far.</p>

<p>Incidentally, how are you supposed to use the accessory interface pins of the MIS shoe when you've also got a flash fitted to it? Don't Sony make an adapter or extender that circumvents this issue?</p>