Hot Shoe -> "PC cord" = "no go" on Pentax?

I recently got the oppurtunity of trying out a light rig in a studio. A guy with a Nikon was in the same spot as I since he didn't have a PC cord connection on his camera, but then he used a hot shoe to pc cord adapter (pictured below).


Worked nicely for him, but not for me! It's not exactly high-tec, so I don't get it. I even tried turning it 180 degrees to see if had been inserted the wrong but unfortunately nothing happened.

Does Pentax simply only work with 5F adapters, or are there possibilities to use regular pc cords (like I just tried to no avail)?

interestingly enough, nikon makes an adapter similar to that one, (solid plastic) and I've used it for years.

It may simply be that particular unit wasn't contacting properly on your camera.

I seem to remember bumping into a nikon shooter, who was having problems with one just like that, and it worked fine on my camera, but was very tempermental on his.

I have heard of a report where a (cheap) lighting rig didn't like the polarity of the PC adapter on Pentax
(Can't remember the lighting manufacturer, but it definitely wasn't Elinchrom or Bowens )

The only other thing to watch would be whether the underside of the adapter is metal or plastic. If it's metal then it may be shorting out the other Pentax pins

I have an all-plastic hotshoe to PC adapter that I got with some gear off ebay... and that works.

Hope that helps!
Matt

I have used various adapters just like the one you show and they have all been fine.

However, I now use an IR trigger which is much more convenient and gets rid of all those cables.

No, it wasn't a cheapo rig. Big, fancy lights everywere Bringing my own trigger system (ir, radio, whatever) wasn't really an option, since there were a queue of people waiting to try it out. Luckily for me I had brought my FGZ360 and that managed to fire off the slaves!

Still I was curious to why it wouldn't work (it did work *once*). It would be nice to shoot without this big flash on my camera. I guess that I will need to bring my own hot shoe adapter next time, now that I know that they should work

Thanks for a nice response to my first post

In my film days I sometimes had trouble with polarity using studio lights. Pentax does seem to be different from other makes in this regard.

G