[miss_agent_m]

Today I was in the lighting studio for my digital photography class. We tried to use the school's hot shoe adapter (I really know nothing about kinda stuff yet) and hook my camera up to the lighting equipment. However it wasn't working. Someone said it looked like the adapters didn't match. Anyway, do pentax cameras need a pentax hot shoe adapter to hook up lighting equipment, or will it just not work? And if so, what kind of adapter do I need to get?

[jfdavis58]

This is an area of much confusion and very little official fact. If you look around this forum for threads on flash, you'll see we're all just getting straight on how and which flash units work with which cameras. There just isn't any official roadmap from Pentax about what is safe and what might burn-out a new toy.

The 360 and 540 seem safe with the entire K-digital line-up, Some of the 360 functionality goes backward to the *ist-D so the ds and dl bodies are mostly covered. From personal testing the Pentax hotshoe adapters and cords all work throughout.

But getting to a studio flash setup is dicey. Using wireless flash slaves works (Wein). Radio slaves (Pocket Wizard) is hit-miss-possibly break.

As to availiability of pentax hotshoe to pc plug adapters, back-ordered no date on delivery---no official 'OK' from the Big Kahuna's either.

Things seem to be settling from the big K10 release and shipment crazyness, Unless the need is very pressing a couple more weeks might see some information; or it might not. Contacting various Pentax reps might work and might not.

That's about as clear as the picture is or is like to get for the near future.

[miss_agent_m]

We weren't trying to put a flash on the camera (although I suppose I'll be needing to do that soon as well), we were trying to use the adapter to connect two of those big ole studio flash things to it. We looked at the hotshoe on the camera and the adapter and the guy said the adapter had 4 connectors or something of the sort and my camera only had 3. It worked on all the cannons and nikons, but of course not mine. I'm just wondering if pentax needs a special adapter.

[bdavis]

Uh, the answer to your question is yes. You do need a different connector--as you noticed, the Pentax hotshoe has a different layout than say, a Canon hotshoe.

If you go back and read, JFD wasn't talking about mounting a flash on the camera. To recap, you probably will want some sort of Pentax hotshoe to pc plug adapters &the associated cordage. As mentioned, supply of these is tight. Additionally, the Pentax cam to studio lighting "roadmap" (of sorts) isn't well documented.

[miss_agent_m]

Ah, ok I got a little confused, still really new to this stuff. Well that stinks that they aren't available. Would you happen to have a link to one of those so I'll know what I'm looking for?

[roscot]

Here are to options for you.

This is the Pentax solution
Pentax Hot Shoe Adapter 2P

This is the one I would recommend, as it controls the trigger voltage, so you won't fry your camera. This especially important if you are attaching a variety of flash units and studio units in which you do not know the trigger voltage.
Wein Safe-Sync Hot Shoe to Hot Shoe (SSHSHS)
It is also in stock.

-Alan

[jfdavis58]

To the original poster: Sorry for the confusion.

To roscot: Thanks for the links and these are exactly the two devices I should have pointed at.

It bears repeating: On at least two other sites there are reports of the Safe-sync device simply not working. These may be isolated incidents getting more attention then desearved. No apparent damage was noticed or mentioned in those reports

[roscot]

To the original poster: Sorry for the confusion.

To roscot: Thanks for the links and these are exactly the two devices I should have pointed at.

It bears repeating: On at least two other sites there are reports of the Safe-sync device simply not working. These may be isolated incidents getting more attention then desearved. No apparent damage was noticed or mentioned in those reports

Interesting John, I hadn't heard that about the Safe-Syncs.

[roy]

if it's a simple non-auto setup, jsut to simply fire the lights then any two pole hot shoe adater should work. look on the bottom of the adapter and look to see if there is only 1 prong and that if it's in the middle of the shoe. if it is then it should work, clean the connection.

[davemdsn]

I tried the safesync in a store once. It was difficult to get the contacts lined up and didn't work at first, but it did eventually work. I ended up going wireless and have had no problems. I must note, however, that I am using the K10 not the K100.