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Flash Unit: Connecting to a Trigger
If
your flash unit has a PC cord, you can connect the cord directly to
your trigger. The end to connect is the male end, labeled Camera
in the photo to the right. (This is the end that would normally
connect to the camera.) You could simply cut off this end of the cable,
strip the wires, and splice them to your trigger wires. This,
of course, would remove your PC cord from service as a
flash-to-camera cord. In order to retain this functionality, we
recommend instead that you obtain a PC extension cord. These are
sold at virtually any camera store. Then splice the trigger wires to
the male end of the extension cord. The other end then plugs into
the PC cord from your flash. (You may wonder why not just go down to
Radio Shack and buy a PC cable end to connect to your trigger wires.
The problem is that there's no convenient consumer source for
these.)
[Here's a method of making
connections that doesn't require any cutting or splicing.]
Many
modern flash units don't come with PC cords. These units are
dedicated to use with particular cameras and are triggered by the
hot shoe of the camera. They typically have a pattern of several
contacts on the flash foot, as shown in the photo to the right. (A
non-dedicated flash would have only one contact in the center of the
foot.) In order to use one of these flash units with a
trigger, you can connect a flash-shoe-to-PC-cord adapter to the
flash foot. One of these is shown in the left-hand diagram below.
The flash unit would mount onto the shoe of the adapter. The PC cord
would then be connected to the trigger. (For high-speed photography,
one would not mount the adapter onto the camera's hot
shoe.) Some of these adapters have 1/4" standard tripod threads
in the base which would make it easy to mount the adapter onto a
mini-tripod such as described in Accessories.
The diagram on the right below shows the adapter mounted on the
flash unit.
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Flash-shoe-to-PC-cord adapter |
Adapter mounted on flash unit (note tripod thread in
bottom of adapter) |
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