You're right Matt, it is now a very useful grip instead of a piece of Pentax waste for recycling.

I can't think why I didn't do this before because I had exactly the same problem with some cold shoes I bought with tripod threads in them. The flash fixing was a metal plate etc, screwed to a block of plastic, but only the normal three pins were insulated from the rest of the plate.

I would have resorted to your idea of a piece of insulating film but I didn't want to run the risk of losing the film at a critical time. It could be glued in I suppose.

You can get a good idea of where this extra pin sits by looking at/measuring the hot shoe adapter 5P, it has all the correct spacings on the top, easier than measuring the centres of the pins.

Anyway, thanks to all. I'm off to Murcia airport now to pick wifey up.

I'll take a pic or two later and show them here.

Sorted it, thanks for all your suggestions. I took my trusty Bremel lookalike and using a variety of drills, reamers, and grinding wheels have removed enough material such that the extra pin just dangles in a hole. Not elegant, but it works.

If anybody else wants to have a go at this, once you get through the black anodised aluminium plate you'll find a brass one underneath, go right through that as well. Remove plenty of material unless you can accurately determine where the centre of the pin will be once the flash is in place.

VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure that the rearward facing edge (relative to the grip) of the hole is bevelled to allow easy removal of the flash. If you were to drill a perfect hole with vertical sides, you risk getting the flash locked in place. Not very likely I know, but stranger things have happened.

All I need to do now is repaint it to 'pretty' it up again, jobs a good'un. Now I have a hammerhead style flash with a choice of either a AF500FTZ or the AF540FGZ. Cooking . . .

Cheers all,

Georges cold shoe suggestion is a good one if I can find one that will lock to the grip in a similar fashion as the flash does. If that's not possible, then there is a potential for the flash to accidentally fall off.

Matt, you say you filed the plate for the 5th Pin? I have only 4 electrical contacts on the underside of my AF540FGZ. Are you counting the side sliding contact (ground) as the first, and the most forward contact on the bottom as the 5th?

I have just checked my hot shoe grip contact area with a meter and the part of the plate where the 5th? contact touches, is indeed anadised aluminium I thought it was plastic) and the small edge that the contact hits, is ground. So, I'm going to try drilling an oversized hole in it for the errant contact to drop into, then chamfer the edge so it'll come out again.

Anybody know how to dismantle a hot shoe grip?

I want to disconnect the electrical contacts to the hot shoe but I've just spent a very frustrating couple of hours trying to take it apart. I want to put my AF540FGZ on it as a hammerhead style flash, but as the manual suggests, using it with an older 3 pin accessory causes a problem.

I think one half of the shell should come off but I can't figure it. I thought that removing the screw on the top should do it, but there's more to it than that. There are 2 screws beneath the labels each end of the synch switch, but they simply hold the switch in place (I think). I haven't completely removed them for fear of losing the switch inside.

I'd love to hear from anybody who's actually done it.

If you have red-eye on, yes, it fires 3 times. Once for the red-eye, again for the pre-flash to calculate exposure, then again for the actual exposure.

But surely when your Chinon is firing during the actual exposure, it must be contributing light so I don't understand why the resulting image is underexposed.

Anyway, you'd better add an AF360FGZ or AF540FGZ to your shopping list

Regards,

First, if you look through the viewfinder when taking a pic using the pop-up flash, you will see the preflash in the viewfinder. The mirror is then raised before the flash for exposure is fired, which of course you won't see.

A simple test of your Chinon in wireless slave mode is to actually take a photo of the Chinon. You'll see in the resulting pic if the Chinon fired or not. Just angle the Chinon flash at 45 degrees to the lens plane.

Pete,

It's possible that your Chinon flash may not be contributing at all to the flash exposure. The P-TTL action of the pop-up flash means it will fire one or more pre-flashes in order to work out correct flash exposure, then it'll fire the flash for the actual exposure. If your Chinon is set as a slave and it responds to the preflash but doesn't recharge in time for the flash that actually makes the exposure, it'll not produce any output.

That said, if you have manual control of your Chinon flash and you are using less than full output, it might have enough charge to work most of the time, but try it on full power.

Gwyn,

You need to re-read your manual. The af360FGZ certainly does work wirelessly with the DS in full P-TTL mode, but you need two of them. Read Page 153 of the manual, bottom row of the table. The read Page 155 - "Using in wireless Mode".

If you were to use an older TTL gun mounted on camera, you could set the AF360FGZ to slave2 mode and it will become a normal slave flash.

These functions are not available using the builtin flash.

Off to Hong Kong! Can we give you a shopping list?

You'd have to make that decision yourself based upon your expectation of printing A3 as opposed to having them printed. I'd suggest that unless you want to adorn your walls with A3 pics or perhaps enter competitions, and you expect to print a reasonable volume, A3 capability is expensive if it is underused. The cost of edge to edge full colour A3 printing on decent paper is quite high.