Dedicated flash, and old-style hot shoe

[proseak]

The other day, I very nearly connected a Metz 58(canon) to a Sony R1. I remembered just in time that it was a dedicated unit.

What are the probable consequences of doing this? Or of using it in an old-school hotshoe?

[jcuknz]

If you covered the 'extra pins' to leave just the central 'trigger' pin I would hope that it would work as 'normal' but in a purely manual mode ... that is what I would do and will do if I ever add my 'canon' dedicated flash to my camera ... rather unlikely since I normally trigger my stand alone flashes by the 'onboard' flash.
The RX1R has a 'pop-up' does yours?
Possibly you want to go out into the wide world where there could be other flashes going off rather than at home as I have been doing which makes using the pop-up questionable becuase of others pre-firing your external before you want it to flash.
Does your camera have the 'wireless' function which could be a solution for you too.

[jcuknz]

I forgot to mention the possible trigger voltage danger of the flash affecting the electronics of the camera by being too high... so you need to find out the tolerance voltage of the camera and the trigger voltage of the flash's trigger circuit.

This site tells me the flash is 2.6v and safe but personally I would like to know the cameras tolerance to be safe.
http://www.botzilla.com/photo/strobeVolts.html


Here are my two YongNuo flashes hotshoe connections/'feet'. The left is the reverse engineered for Canon with its four pins to talk to the camera and right a universal 'dumb' model The bottom pin is the one which triggers the flash to work. You may find that the pins do not connect depending on how far into the shoe the flash foot goes but that had only happened to me once.

If they are incompatible search for info about Wein and similar adaptors which isolate the flash from the camera while relaying the trigger signal. It fits between flash and camera.

Hope this helps you decide

[Photos by 8year old Nikon 5700 bridge]