Minolta Hot Shoe Adapter?

Digital Illusions

ok, well i guess i should have done more homework on this flash before i bought it but, i didn't so here i ask.

i bought a promaster ftd7000m flash off ebay. a buddy of mine has the same flash and uses it an an optical off camera slave. and i wanted to do the same.

unfortunately the one i bought has a minolta mount which is different than a standard mount. at first i thought this was no big deal, until i later learned that the minolta version of the 7000m does not have a built in optical slave (like orher models) but rather a built in minolta rf receiver.

i would like to still use this flash as an off camera flash, so does anybody out there know of a optical slave hotshoe mount for a minolta mount or a stanard camera shoe to minolta flash foot adapter?

if i need to i will just relist this item on ebay and get the right one later but i would rather avoid that if nescessary.

please help

ziggy53

If I understand correctly you have a Minolta shoe flash and you want to find a way to optically slave the flash?

I honestly have not heard of either a slave unit or adapter to work with a Minolta/Sony system flash (or compatible flash).

Sorry, I cannot help on this one.

Digital Illusions

ziggy53 wrote:

If I understand correctly you have a Minolta shoe flash and you want to find a way to optically slave the flash?

I honestly have not heard of either a slave unit or adapter to work with a Minolta/Sony system flash (or compatible flash).

Sorry, I cannot help on this one.

thats right it is a Promaster brand with a Minolta shoe. the model flash(ftd7000m) is supposed to have an optical slave built in. at least friends flashes do (he has a canon and pentax version of this flash). i got this one off ebay assuming it would work in the same manner. unfortunately it does not.

therefore i would like to find an optical slave to fit on the shoe or i will need to try and sell it on ebay and hopefully get my money out of it and get the kind i know will work.

KD5NRH

Well, I think there was one, but given the price of some of the proprietary Minolta stuff, it probably cost almost as much as a Vivitar 285HV, and AFAIK, Sony hasn't picked up making one, nor any of the usual knockoff makers. (there are at least a couple of $20 knockoffs to go the other way, so it's somewhat surprising that nobody's made one to use the strobes on standard hotshoes) If you can find it, it won't be cheap. Also, it will raise the strobe up even higher over the mount point, which could be a concern if you're trying for low placement or using umbrellas.

What I ended up doing with a 5200i was replacing the 4-pin off-camera TTL socket with a 1/8" jack so I could still use it on-camera with my Sony and my Minoltas, but also off-camera with any trigger using the 1/8" plug connection. I'm not sure how one would do that with the wireless models. It also still leaves me jury-rigging ways to mount the strobe to anything.

Also, for anyone considering doing the same, I would warn that triggering manually via the TTL circuit adds a lot of delay to the flash; shutter speeds have to be down around 1/40 to work right. I suspect there's some way to bypass that entirely and get faster triggering, but without a schematic, I'd be hard-pressed to find it in that tiny rat's nest of circuitry.

EDIT TO ADD: Google OS-1100 - it still won't trigger from a standard shoe, (it has an ISO shoe for mounting, but no contacts in it) but it would offer a way to hack in a jack by butchering a $30-40 adapter rather than the flash itself. OTOH, if you're not using any Sony or Minolta cameras, eBaying that flash and picking up something with an ISO shoe sounds like the way to go.

KD5NRH

KD5NRH wrote:

Well, I think there was one, but given the price of some of the proprietary Minolta stuff, it probably cost almost as much as a Vivitar 285HV, and AFAIK, Sony hasn't picked up making one, nor any of the usual knockoff makers.

Found it; the FS-1200

Unfortunately, nobody has any in stock, and they appear to go quickly at $40 on eBay when they show up.

You could check with http://www.safe-sync.com/ and see if they can do a custom one, but since their other stuff starts at $80, you'd probably be happier just buying a Vivitar 285HV for about $90 and avoiding the whole issue.

Digital Illusions

KD5NRH wrote:

Found it; the FS-1200

Unfortunately, nobody has any in stock, and they appear to go quickly at $40 on eBay when they show up.

You could check with http://www.safe-sync.com/ and see if they can do a custom one, but since their other stuff starts at $80, you'd probably be happier just buying a Vivitar 285HV for about $90 and avoiding the whole issue.

FS-1200, that looks like something that could work. i am going to search and see if i can find one.