iISO (intelligent
ISO
ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization.
ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance
* Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007
* Iso ...
)
flash shoe
file:Canon 350D Hot Shoe.jpg, Canon EOS 350D Hot shoe
file:Konica Minolta Dynax 7D hot shoe.jpg, Proprietary hot shoe used by Minolta and older Sony cameras (Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D)
A hot shoe is a mounting point on the top of a camera to attac ...
(aka "reversed" hotshoe) is the unofficial name for the proprietary accessory flash attachment and control interface used on
Minolta
was a Japanese manufacturer of cameras, camera accessories, photocopiers, fax machines, and laser printers. Minolta Co., Ltd., which is also known simply as Minolta, was founded in Osaka, Japan, in 1928 as . It made the first integrated aut ...
cameras since the i-series introduced in 1988, and subsequently
Konica Minolta
is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Marunouchi, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Chiyoda, Tokyo, with offices in 49 countries worldwide. The company manufactures business and industrial imaging products, in ...
and later
Sony α
Sony α (the lower case to Greek letter alpha, often transliterated as ''Sony Alpha'') is a digital camera system introduced on 5 June 2006. It uses and expands upon Konica Minolta camera technologies, including the Minolta AF SLR lens mo ...
DSLRs
A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that combines the optics and the mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor.
The reflex design scheme is the primary difference between ...
and
NEX-7 up to 2012. Sony called it the Auto-lock Accessory Shoe (AAS). In order to speed up and enhance attachment, detachment and latching, it departs from the conventional circa-1913 mechanical design that is now standardized as
ISO 518:2006 and used by other camera systems, including
Canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
,
Nikon
(, ; ), also known just as Nikon, is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging products. The companies held by Nikon form the Nikon Group.
Nikon's products include cameras, camera ...
,
Pentax
is a brand name used primarily by the Japanese multinational imaging and electronics company Ricoh for DSLR cameras, lenses, sport optics (including binoculars and rifle scopes), and CCTV optics. The Pentax brand is also used by Hoya Corporatio ...
,
Olympus, and
Leica.
History
The mechanical design of the accessory shoe now common on most cameras dates back to 1913, when
Oskar Barnack
Oskar Barnack (Nuthe-Urstromtal, Brandenburg, 1 November 1879 – Bad Nauheim, Hesse, 16 January 1936) was a German inventor and photographer who built, in 1913, what would later become the first commercially successful 35mm still-camera, sub ...
, the inventor of the Leica, devised it for attaching an accessory viewfinder.
By the 1940s, with the addition of the central contact, the design became commonly used for attaching and triggering accessory flashes and known as the
"hot-shoe". Prior to 1988, Minolta has used that familiar, common hot-shoe design, adding, just like the other makers, its own proprietary contacts for enhanced control.
In 1988, Minolta introduced the iISO flash shoe in its new
i series of cameras. Reportedly conceived with the input from
Herbert Keppler
Herbert "Burt" Keppler (April 21, 1925 – January 4, 2008) was an American photographer, journalist, author and consultant. His career spanned 57 years, including 37 at '' Modern Photography'' and two decades at ''Popular Photography''. He ...
in 1987, the new Minolta patented design
featured a push-button latching mechanism, for the purpose of easier and faster flash attachment and removal and a more secure hold.
On 12 September 2012,
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...
introduced a new 21+3-pin metal-based hotshoe with mechanical quick locking mechanism, called
Multi Interface Shoe
The Multi Interface Shoe ( MI Shoe or MIS) is a proprietary camera hotshoe introduced by Sony in 2012, replacing an assortment of other proprietary hotshoes used by Sony in various types of cameras in the past.
Overview
The ''Multi Interfac ...
. At first sight it resembles a standard ISO 518 hotshoe with just the middle contact and chassis and without any vendor-specific extra contacts, but additional contacts are hidden under the front of the hotshoe. The new hotshoe is mechanically incompatible with the iISO hotshoe, but electrically backwards compatible. The first cameras to use the new hotshoe are the
SLT-A99,
NEX-6,
NEX-VG900,
NEX-VG30 and
DSC-RX1. An
ADP-MAA adapter to the iISO flash shoe is however provided with the Sony SLT-A99, and the newest flash Sony HVL-F60M, which uses the new hotshoe comes with a reverse adapter ADP-AMA for older Sony and Minolta cameras.
The last cameras introduced utilizing the iISO hotshoe in 2012 were the
SLT-A37 and
NEX-7 as well as the
Hasselblad Lunar
The Sony α NEX-7 is a digital camera announced 24 August 2011 by Sony. It is a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera and as such inherits a smaller body form factor than a traditional digital single-lens reflex camera, while still retaining th ...
.
Design
Mechanical
The use of the button-operated latch, besides facilitating a quick, one-handed flash attachment and detachment, also eliminates the possibility of the flash gradually working itself loose and shifting in the shoe, which on camera systems using the ISO 518 hot-shoe can lead to certain contacts being broken, contacts with the wrong pins being made, or in extreme cases the flash sliding off the hot-shoe entirely.
* ''Attachment''
As the flash slides onto the camera body, the sides of the T shaped flange on the body engage the lips of the rotated C shaped profile on the flash. When the flash is fully inserted, a spring-loaded latch on the flash locks into the indentation in the middle of the flash shoe.
* ''Detachment''
The user presses the unlock button on the flash body, which, by means of a lever or a wedge mechanism disengages the locking latch, enabling the user to slide off the flash from the camera body.
Electronic Contacts
Listed top-to-bottom (looking at the flash shoe socket as pictured above, or with the camera positioned with the lens pointing up):
The electrical interface and protocol is backward-compatible with the older Minolta hotshoe, except for that it does not support the ''F4'' signal, which was provided by the first generation of Minolta AF SLRs to control the
AF illuminator
An autofocus (or AF) optical system uses a sensor, a control system and a motor to focus on an automatically or manually selected point or area. An electronic rangefinder has a display instead of the motor; the adjustment of the optical system ...
, as this function became part of the digital protocol.
Variations
* ''Analog and digital control modes''
Digital control mode is used if a contemporary flash is detected by the camera. Otherwise, to support basic triggers and legacy and low-end flashes, analog interface is used.
* ''Additional electronic contacts on
Minolta 3000i
was a Japanese manufacturer of cameras, camera accessories, photocopiers, fax machines, and laser printers. Minolta Co., Ltd., which is also known simply as Minolta, was founded in Osaka, Japan, in 1928 as . It made the first integrated autofocu ...
/3700i''
This low-end body omitted a built-in flash, and Minolta made available
D-314i and
D-316i compact and inexpensive flashes especially for it. These flashes relied on camera battery for power delivered via three additional pins on the hot shoe (+5V regulated and switched flash electronics power via an additional contact in the upper corner of the right contact column, and unregulated power and ground wired to the camera's battery to charge the flash via two high-power contacts located underneath the left and right rails). No other camera body has the additional contacts required to support the D-314i and D-316i flashes.
Criticism
The iISO hot shoe's introduction left few informed users indifferent - some photographers loved it, while others hated it. The sentiment revolves around these areas:
* ''Legacy support''
During its 1988 introduction, the new Minolta iISO flash shoe presented an inconvenience to users with significant investment in the old, ISO 518 based Minolta flashes and accessories. The fact that Minolta chose to offset the new flash shoe introduction by three years from the 1985
SR-to-
A-lens mount transition, as opposed to doing both concurrently, may have added insult to injury for some users. To soften the impact, Minolta had made available a FS-1100 (8825-670) adapter allowing to mount the old flashes and controllers on new bodies, and a FS-1200 (8825-680) to do the reverse. A custom-modified variant of the FS-1100 also featuring a
PC terminal
A Prontor-Compur connection (also known as a PC connector, PC terminal, or PC socket) is a standard 3.5 mm (1/8") electrical connector (as defined in ISO 519 was made available by the Minolta service at request at least in Germany and the USA, this part was also mentioned in the Minolta USA FAQs under the unofficial name "FS-PC" (8825-0000-00).
* ''Interoperability across systems''
It is possible to mount, say, a
Canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
flash directly on a
Nikon
(, ; ), also known just as Nikon, is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging products. The companies held by Nikon form the Nikon Group.
Nikon's products include cameras, camera ...
body, and trigger it during the exposure. However, the ISO 518 hot-shoe standard does not govern electronic data transfer between the flash and the body
(e.g. for charge and exposure status,
TTL metering, ratio, focal length,
ISO exposure index, distance, pre-flash metering, modeling light, red-eye reduction burst, wireless control). Different camera makers' dedicated flash systems are, in fact, incompatible in terms of both the proprietary contact layout and the communication protocol. That said, many current wireless radio triggers for professional studio strobe systems remain a relevant real-world application of the basic ISO 518 hot-shoe design. Their use with Sony and Minolta DSLRs requires either the Minolta FS-1100 adapter, now discontinued, or the Sony FA-HS1AM
adapter. Named
FA-SA1AM (2-8944-030-1), Sony also provided a mechanical-only mount adapter (similar to the FS-1100 but without any contacts) with the HVL-RLAM.
There are also various third-party adapters such as the Seagull SC-5 or the
Yongnuo
YONGNUO(永诺) is the international trademark of photographic equipment manufacturer Shenzhen Yongnuo Photographic Equipment Co.,Ltd. of Shenzhen, China. Which develops and manufactures photographic equipment, including smart camera, lenses, ...
YN-H3.
* There are also wireless radio triggers for the iISO flash shoe available, like the PixelPawn TF-363, the Phottix Strato II and many other systems.
References
External links
Minolta/Konica Minolta/Sony Alpha flashesFlash AccessoriesTechnical references
{{Minolta
Flash mounts
Minolta flashes for iISO flash shoe
Sony flashes for Auto-lock Accessory Shoe
Minolta A-mount cameras
Konica Minolta A-mount cameras
Sony A-mount cameras