I need to shoot still life with studio strobes.Will my 950 be ok connecting the speedotrons PC cord (not personal computer)to this device(cannot remember the name)that will slip into the hot shoe of the SK-E900.I asked a NIKON REP,he did not know!!

-- RICH ZILA (maceral@mail.uplink.net), May 12, 1999

Answers

It *might* be OK. The concern I would have would be the voltage applied to the Nikon's contacts. - In the "old" days, I knew of a few pro photographers that burned-out the sync contacts on their Kodak DC410's (Nikon 8008s body) by running their studio strobes directly into it. Best maybe to just use the camera contacts to trigger a cheapie low-power flash unit, then optical slaves to trigger the big studio units. (I've even seen people glom a slave "peanut" onto the front of the cheapie flash unit with duct tape, masking-off any light output from it, using it only to fire the slave trigger.) I think Phil Askey's site has a blurb on running studio strobes from the 950, but from personal experience with other digicams, I wouldn't recommend a direct connection.) Hope

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), May 25, 1999.

VERY EASY: There is an adapter flash cord available from Nikon part# AS-E900. This hot-shoe adapter cord plugs into the sync-terminal that has the little screw cap on it under the lens. After this you can just get a cheap hot-shoe adapter to slide into the AS-E900 hot shoe and your regular PC sync cords fit into that. This Nikon partcan be ordered over the web from "calumet.com". They list it on their website for US$ 34.95 plus shipping/handling It was not in stock at this time as Nikon is a little slow with anticipating the need for aftermarket parts. The only problem using Speedotron (or any external flashunit) is setting the light output so it matches the f-stop of your camera. In the manual settings you can force the flash to fire in the aperture priority mode (shutter @ 1/30 sec). The lens changes aperture as you zoom as you can see on the display LCD. Flash units with variable output do better here because you can change the output of your flash without changing your light-quality (distance of light-source to subject). High power flash units could be used at higher f-stops if you employ a Neutral Density Filter on the lens to reduce the power to the f-stop your camera tells you it is going to use. Read a filter manual how to do that. Good Luck. Rinus Borgsteede

-- Rinus Borgsteede (RinusPhoto@cadvision.com), May 26, 1999.

For those that are still trying their eternal flash to fire with their Nikon Coolpix 950, I heard from the Nikon Tech that the trigger voltage must be 5 volts or lower. Most flash manufacturers can answer your questions about their Trigger Voltages. If not, take the life of your digicam into your own hands or use the famous slave system.

Rinus

-- Rinus Borgsteede (RinusPhoto@cadvision.com), July 01, 1999.