 |
| The PC Sync connector |
Also in this issue:
- A99's Wireless Flash Delay
- A Zeiss Full-Frame Alternative
- Seminar Update
The Taming of the Shoe
Once upon a time there were cold shoes. Nobody called them that, but that’s what they were -- small brackets mounted onto the camera body onto which you could mount your flashbulb holder.
 |
The original Flash bracket holder,
retroactively labeled the "cold shoe". |
Once mounted, you would connect the flashbulb holder electronically to the camera via a PC Sync cord into a PC Sync socket (whose design hasn't changed much over the last century). Inside the camera there was a mechanical switch which briefly “shorted together” the 2 wires of the PC Sync cable when the shutter was actuated. It was a very simple and very effective mechanism, which also worked well when the electronic flash was invented.
 |
Adding the circuitry to trigger the flash
now made it a "hot shoe". |
“Hey, let’s get rid of that annoying PC Sync cable!” one engineer must have said to himself in the 1960’s, as he
