Hot Shoe Cover and Flash Issue on G9

[Rich B NYC]

The other day I put a Nikon hot shoe cover on my Canon G9. The cover is from my D80 and is completely plastic.

 

For some reason, the presence of the cover prevents the onboard flash from firing. It even prevents changing the flash

mode to "on", "off" or "auto". It took me a while to figure out what was going on and I even went into the instruction

manual and re-checked all of my setting.

 

Once I took the cover off, the flash worked fine and modes could be changed.

 

As I mentioned, the cover is nothing but a piece of plastic. There is no metal that could short out any of the hot shoe

contacts. I'm guessing that the pressure of the cover is "fooling" the camera into thinking that there's an accessory

flash in the shoe, but that's just a guess.

 

Anybody have an idea as to why this is happening?

[tjod]

Lensmate makes a hotshoe cover specifically designed for the G9. It allows use of the onboard flash while in place.

 

http://lensmateonline.com/newsite/richard_franiec_accessories.html#chsc

[Rich B NYC]

Tim,

 

I'm familiar with the Lensmate cover. I saw it when I ordered the Franiec grip (which is excellent). I just thought that ten bucks for that little piece of plastic was ridiculous so decided to use a spare Nikon cover that didn't have a big "G" on it. Obviously, that didn't work out too well.

 

Thanks for the link though.

[Rich B NYC]

Another thing that is obvious is that I didn't read all the details about the Lensmate cover which clearly states that it allows the onboard flash to operate. I still don't think that it's worth ten bucks though. :-)

[tjod]

Hi Richard;

 

Sorry - I realize now I was not specific enough. The link is to a page that explains how that cover avoids triggering the flash-disable switch. Maybe you can modify the one you have to avoid the switch? On my G9, there is a tiny switch about halfway along the left side, under the spring steel pressure plate in the hotshoe bracket.

[Rich B NYC]

Tim,

 

I did follow the link which is where I found out about the Lensmate cover allowing use of the onboard flash. For some reason, I missed that when I read that page a few weeks ago.

 

Thanks for the tip about the switch. I'm going to take a good look at my G9 tonight and see if I can modify the Nikon cover.

[NK Guy]

Yeah, you have to trim off some plastic from the shoe cover to avoid pressing the microswitch in the shoe.

[Rich B NYC]

Over the weekend I did trim back some of the plastic on the Nikon cover with an X-acto knife and it no longer presses on the microswitch.