Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Adapters

Project 365: Day 010 Back at the January Athens Strobist Meetup (Facebook, Flickr) photo shoot, the wind knocked over my umbrella light stand. The result was the foot of my flash adapter breaking. No big deal, just order another one, right?

The February shoot didn’t involve me having my equipment, so I didn’t bother ordering a new one. March didn’t have one. So in April, there was a shoot announced at the last minute, so I quickly ordered three knowing they might not arrive in time, but at least for the May shoot I would have one. (That April photoshoot turned out not to have any models show so I wouldn’t have had to do anything anyway.)

The replacement hot shoe adapters arrived after almost a week. The cables didn’t fit them. My first thought was somehow I screwed up and ordered the wrong item. So back on the ordering web site, I compared the item links in the order history. Both went to the same page. Now certain this wasn’t my error, I sent a message to the seller. They didn’t respond, so I griped on Twitter. Of course, I got a response to send an email with details. After checking, the response back over email was they were going to work with the manufacturer.

I don’t know turnaround times for something like this. So I bought a couple from two different vendors. Both work and in time for the May shoot.

Now… Does anyone know anything about Vivitar 283 flashes?

Ezra S F

2 responses to “Adapters”

  1. Andy Fore Avatar
    Andy Fore

    The Vivitar 283s are great workhorse flashes. My father and I have used several over the years. I am planning on replacing my Kodak flash with one in a couple of months.

    Make sure that you measure the voltage coming across the contacts before you attach it to anything, though. With some units there have been reports of freakishly high voltage, which wouldn’t matter on an all manual camera, but it would fry some of the new electronic ones. If it does have a high voltage just use it on a slave and save yourself the trouble of replacing a camera body.

    The other thing is that while most of the flash is pretty robust, the hotshoe can be kind of soft, so don’t abuse it. The good thing is that the shoes are easy to replace.

    BTW, the reCAPTCHA on this post was awesome: “therapists motive”. Kind of reminded me of the Jeopardy skit on SNL.

    Reply
  2. Ezra S F Avatar
    Ezra S F

    I bought solely for using off camera and never intended to put them on the camera exactly for the surge issue.

    However, I can’t seem to activate the flash meaning either… I’m doing it wrong or both are broken.

    Reply

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