Canon changed their hotshoe on the SL3 - a problem?
It has been pointed out that the SL3 has a slightly different hot shoe, with the center pin removed from the hot shoe. Michael the Maven breathlessly claimed that nearly all of the third party flash accessories no longer work with the Canon SL3!
There certainly is some truth to this. Without the center pin, you cannot use a hot shoe adapter for a strobe, or possibly a simple strobe remote trigger. Strobes are usually used in studio scenarios and are designed to work across manufacturers. They usually use what is called a PC Sync jack that is on your camera, but failing to have this, you can get a cheap adapter that sits on your hotshoe instead. However, without the center pin, these hotshoe adapters will no longer trigger the flash. Third party strobe non E-TTL radio triggers also will not work. Also, some really cheap generic flashes that sit on your hotshoe will no longer work either. These flashes attach to your hotshoe but do not provide any E-TTL communication with the camera body and simply work in manual mode.
You can still trigger your strobes with the SL3 however through what is called optical slave triggers, which work by detecting a strong pulse of light from usually another flash (E-TTL compatible only in this case). If you use a flash you just have to remember to turn the flash on manual mode so that it does not "pre-fire" a light burst for E-TTL.
E-TTL triggers and E-TTL flashes should still work, including most third party flashes that are "E-TTL II" or "made only for Canon flashes". So if you had your sights set on a nice new Yongnuo flash, then that should still work with this camera. Naturally, any Canon speedlight will still work with this camera. Any source of additional light that doesn't connect to your camera and is not triggered, will still be fine. So if you plan on using your SL3 with continuous lighting which is becoming all the more common because of LED panels, this will have no effect on its operation. And finally, yes, the built in flash will still work in a pinch as well.
Is this a big problem? Not as much as what is being made out in some corners. If you plan on using your shiny new SL3 in the studio environment, it's connectivity is certainly limited, but not impossible. It'll be a matter of time before some enterprising third party creates an adapter that works to fix this. instead of using the center pin, just use E-TTL signals to trigger the flash, ignoring the pre-flash signals.
Don't ask me why Canon adopted this. To be honest, I think it's pretty dumb. I guess it saves some cents in manufacturing costs, and Canon really doesn't use the center pin for their flashes and accessories.
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