Don't do this with your SX20

[Pardes]

I'm not obsessive, nor do I suffer from OCD...well except maybe when it comes to my camera equipment.

I was surprised to see the SX20 arrive without a cap over the hot shoe contacts. It seemed prudent that there should be one, so I borrowed one from my Pentax dslr. It fit nicely and was simply a piece of plastic that was a bit hollowed out on the inside so that it would not touch the contacts but would protect them from the Delaware winter elements.

I'm still figuring out the camera and was eperimenting with varying the flash output. Or so I thought. No matter what I did, the flash controls were grayed out. And then ... gasp... I noticed that the flash would not fire under ANY conditions.

Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and before I freaked out and assumed I had a bad camera, I slipped out the hot shoe cover and then everything was fine.

How bizarre. Without touching any of the contacts, I still can't figure out why the flash will not work with the cap, but I'm relieved that nothing is wrong with the lovely camera.

[arpoador]

This is true of the G10 & SX1 as well. I call my little squares my "bracketing suppressors", since I rarely use flash anyway. (They also suppress AE bracketing, so I went ahead and turned it on by default, and just pop out the little square when I want the bracketing to work.

[Jon]

It actually applies to most of Canon's cameras with pop-up flashes and hot shoes. It's so the "pop-up"flash won't if you've installed a shoe-mounted flash it might run into. There's a micro-switch under the (right, IIRC) side rail. If you're determined to cover the shoe, you could check out the side rails and cut out a part of the cover where the switch is.

[Graphyfotoz]

Yup I made that mistake with my 10D years back.
Same thing happened....I freaked....then did a....DOH!

[Pardes]

Thanks everyone. I'm glad I'm not the only one who freaked over this.

Jon, thanks for the tip to circumvent the problem if my OCD rises again. A 270EX flash is winging it's way here and I may just keep it on the camera most of the time. Let's see how much trouble I can get into with that arrangement.