Mike wrote:
And rather unlucky. If you find an "adaptor" for any of the (as far as I can find out) custom Pentax fittings, be sure to let the list know. There are rather a lot of us who will be wanting to do the same. Which is why Pentax has made them themselves....
Well, there may be hope here. The little 4-pin data cable for a 3.5" floppy disc drive in a computer works perfectly for the SFX. Just remove the connector's contact pins, cut off one of the outer guide routes of the connector, and re-insert the contact pins in the resulting 3-path plug. Solder the three leads to the corresponding positions on a female 2.5 mm stereo jack, and plug the MZ-6's relase cord plug into that. Et voila, you have a cheap-ass adapter.
Of course, this way the new plug for the SFX doesn't lock in place, but the amount of friction is high enough to keep the thing firmly in place (and low enough as not to damage the connector pins on the camera). You can opt to leave it permanently in place and just plug in the release cord when necessary.
For more complex plugs, a simple way to make your own is by simply slipping mini connectors (again, from some cheap multi-pin computer cable) over their contact points on the camera (or whatever, I used this technique in a neurophysiology lab and have also applied it to '60 musical instruments with weird connectors) and then glue the wires together in situ. I prefer to use dental acrylic, but when unavailable some two-component synthetic resin works just fine. Of course, you'll have to make sure the glue doesn't permanently affix the wires to the camera, but using a little grease or plastic foil between the contact surfaces works miracles.
Z.
> So, I was wondering... does anyone here know (and is willing to share that
> knowledge ;-)) if ALL pentax electric able release switches operate on this
> same priciple? Because if so, I can simply make plug adapters for the
> different systems, and use the MZ-6's cable to operate all cameras. I'd be
> happy to put the "how-to" drawings on the web somewhere.
>
> And yes, I'm cheap ;-).
