Vivitar 2800 Sync Port Mod.

[710 Photography]

Hi, first time posting on this forum. I decided to become a member after I found my self coming back often to read the great information provided.

I recently bought a Vivitar 2800 flash on ebay and after reading a post on this forum decided to put a 1/8th inch sync port in it. Here's the thread I'm talking about,

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=477444

I did the mod and tried to document it a little by posting on my blog,

http://710photography.blogspot.com/

My question is for some reason I can't get my optical slave to work with it. The optical slave is a Sonia brand bought from Lon at Flash Zebra.

http://flashzebra.com/opticalslaves/0073.shtml

Anyone have any ideas why it won't work?

[FlashZebra]

Nice modification.

But, did you attend to the proper polarity of the connections on your nice new sync port (and please do not reply that polarity does not matter, I see this all the time and it is just incorrect)?

An optical slave is a circuit that needs to be powered by the sync Voltage from the flash it is connected to.

If polarity is reversed it is like putting the batteries in backwards for any electrical device, they just do not work.

My dollar is on the bet that you have the polarity backwards on your new chassis miniphone jack sync port.

The tip of a plug inserted into the jack should be positive, and the sleeve (ground) should be negative.

Enjoy! Lon

[710 Photography]

Ahhh, thanks. I bet that's it.

[710 Photography]

You were right Lon. I had the polarity reversed. Works great now.

I ran my ebay trigger to my Canon 540EZ and the optical on the Vivitar 2800 and got up to 1/250th sync'd. At 1/320th I'd get the black bar. I'm not sure if this is typical of this sort of set up, but I'm fairly happy with that. Any comments?

BTW Lon are you still expecting that shipment of umbrella stand adapters by the end of this month. I've been holding off on ebay because I'd rather buy from you.