At least I think I do. Haven't tested yet. I taped off the rear left contact on the hot shoe of my R5 (after trying the other two) and found that I can now set any shutter speed I want to with my Metz 40mz2 and SCA351. I haven't tried any film yet, but TTL seems to still work as normal. Have any of you fine people tried this or heard of it? I hope it works out because it would make my profesional life easier. I was spoiled with my EOS 1n and related accessories, but couldn't resist the Leica lenses. Thanks for any input.

-- Lance Goins (goinsphoto@hotmail.com), January 19, 2002

Answers

"I can now set any shutter speed I want"-I hope you mean any speed less than the camera's flash sync speed.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), January 19, 2002.

Yes, I meant up to the sync speed. I do a lot of fill flash at 1/15 or 1/30 in low light, and this new discovery might help me out. I always use a hybrid flash set up... I like to use TTL with the camera in manual mode. When I use something that I can't cut flash output down to -2/3 or -1 stop (like the Metz), I just reset the ISO on the camera so the flash does what I want.(after metering for ambient light at the correct ISO!) I just hope that contact I blocked doesn't effect anything but the setting of shutter speed on the camera. I'm sure I'll find out with further fiddling. Maybe it's time for an R7 or R8?

-- Lance Goins (goinsphoto@hotmail.com), January 19, 2002.

If it works, you don't really need to reset the ISO, just unlock the exposure compensation and push it forward as many "clicks" as necessary for the -compensation you want. That's what I do with my R6/6.2s. Quicker than resetting the ISO, takes one finger and can be done with the camera at eyelevel.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), January 19, 2002.

Apparantly you can do a similar trick with the CLE Minolta, which has an annoying habit of refusing to fire the flash if the shutter speed picked by AE drops below 1/60. I'll have to try it out and report back. What you are basically doing is keeping the TTL system operational but disconnecting the auto shutter speed setting control contact pin.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), January 20, 2002.

Lance,

thatīs exactly what I did with my R5 many years ago. It was a common trick of Leica-users at that time. Make sure to use only sync-speed or slower! Now I use R7, R8 or EOS 1n (if AF is needed) with flash.

Best regards

-- J. Hildebrand (j.hildebrand@hildebrand.de), February 01, 2002.