Using a canon speedlite 550EX with a Bronica 6x6

[kat99]

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone could tell me if it is possible to use a canon speedlite 550EX with a bronica 6x6 medium format camera, which has no hot shoe. For studio lights I use a PC cable to connect the PC port on the camera to the flash, but I also want to be able to use it with my speedlite on location. I understand that you can get adaptors to attach to the hotshoe on the flash which will then take a PC cable, but read that this is often problematic.

"Note that those Canon flash units which lack PC sockets generally don’t work particularly well when triggered by a PC to hotshoe adapter - they usually will just fire once and then lock up until they’ve been turned off and then turned back on again. This is because they were not designed to work this way."

Has any one experienced these problems or know of any other ways of connecting them. I am happy to set the power of the flash manually so just need some way to get it to trigger. Any help or details on exactly what cables/ adaptors I might need would be great.

[GeoffWessex]

I'm assuming you mean a Bronica SQ series. Seems to me that it might need an extra gizmo...

The other socket beside the threaded cable release socket is for the SCA 386 flash adapter. Buy this adapter and you will enjoy TTL-OTF (Off The Film plane) flash reading with Metz flashes. Sunpak and Quantum also make their own flash adapter compatible with their own line of flashes, which adds more flash versatility to the SQ-Ai system. The SCA 386 adapter is an expensive, puny little box with two coiled cords running out of it, one for the camera body and the other for the flash. The top of the box has an ISO dial that ranges from 25 to 1250 which means that if you're silly enough to shoot ISO 800 film outdoors and want one stop under fill flash, you're close but still SOL (**** Out of Luck). Users should also note that the flash exposure is independent of any metered prism exposure values so one has to ensure that the shutter speed doesn't go dangerously slow and show up hand shaking when in low ambient light conditions. No mention of Canon Speedlite there.

The above comes from this site.