LX3 with sb800

[chrisk]

will either the camera or the flash get damaged if i use it in the hotshoe ?

[surenj]

Will be watching with interest as I want to use my 430EX with this camera.

Best use for this could be with remote triggers though... that would provide you with a nice lens and nice light but a small package.

[chrisk]

surenj, the lx3 can trigger sb800/900 flashes when they are set to su4 mode with its PUF, so off cam lighting is not an issue and you dont need radio triggers. dont know if this is the same with canon flash.

i have tried the sb800 on the hotshoe and it fires, (no ttl though obviously). what i want to know is will i fry my camera and/ or flash by using a nikon flash on a panasonic hotshoe.

[aim54x]

SO if you have tried it (which I take from your last post) and both seem to work then I would imagine it should be alright, esp since the SB-800/900 have a much lower trigger voltage than older flashes.

[chrisk]

i dont want to "imagine" though cam, i want someone to tell me for SURE that i cant fry anything. lol
how do i figure out the voltages and that stuff for a Panasonic and a nikon flash ?

[aim54x]

Just had a bit of a trawl, found this:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/843626@N22/discuss/72157607189977675/
apparently someone called up Panasonic

1banaan says:

Ignorant me took about 20 pictures using an old Vivitar 273 flash unit before I started reading into this subject. I just measured the hot shoe voltage and my meter read 217 V. The hot shoe of, my LX3 survived up until now, but I just mailed Panasonic support to verify. Until then I am not going to use the flash unit again.
Posted 4 months ago.

1banaan says:

To follow up on my previous post, I just got a reply from Panasonic customer support:

"Panasonic cameras use a 6 volt trigger voltage. We do no recommend using
an external flash on the camera unless the flash is designed to be used
with a digital still camera."

and this http://www.lifeisaprayer.com/articles/photography/vivitar_285-voltage.html teaches you how to measure trigger voltage. I had a look for the triggering voltages for the SB-600, SB-800 and SB-900 but had no luck

Hope this helps.

[chrisk]

thanks cam, i found the same threads when i did the search and the problem is that its not conclusive one way or the other. so the safe option is..."dont use it". besides i can trigger stuff remotely with the PUF and i'm not about to use the sb800 mounted regualrly on an lx3 anyway. just wanted to know "out of interest" i guess.

thanks for taking the time though.

[aim54x]

no worries Rooz. if you really must know then you should call Panasonic yourself and then maybe talk to Nikon as well.

I needed something to do to take my mind off my thesis for a bit.

[DaveB]

If you want to know the trigger voltage of a flash, charge it up and measure the voltage with a multimeter. The trigger is via the centre pin (measure the voltage between that pin on the flash and the one that connects to the hotshoe sides). On my 580EX it's less than 4.5V, and I'm pretty sure that an SB800 will also be less than 5V. Be sure the flash is not in slave mode before you measure: you might not see any voltage otherwise.

The camera fires the flash by shorting those two pins together.
The other pins are used for the Nikon or Panasonic TTL signalling. They'll definitely be low-voltage. If you're worried about them you can cover them up (e.g. with a thin sheet of overhead-transparency plastic with a hole in the middle for the trigger pin).