Don't use Minolta Maxxum flashes on your Sony NEX-VG- camera

da na · August 21

This post serves as a warning to anyone looking for a flash unit for their Sony NEX or Alpha camera who might've had the same thought process as I did: "Hey, these old Minolta Maxxum flashes are like $10 and have the same weird hot shoe connector as the Sony cameras!".

I purchased a Maxxum 3200i flash for my NEX-VG20, not expecting any of the fancy features (TTL metering, flash zoom, slow synchro) to work properly, I just wanted a cheap, bright flash. But what I did not expect is to find that the camera doesn't trigger the flash at all. Shorting the ground and trigger pins on the bottom of the flash gun confirms that the flash works quite well, but the NEX cameras must trigger flash in a different manner that does not involve simply shorting those two pins. The indicator LEDs on the flash flicker when the shutter fires, so if I had to take a wild guess I'd think the camera sends 12v to the trigger pin rather than just shorting trigger and ground, and thus does not work with these old flashes. What's quite odd is that the flash fired thrice while on my NEX-VG20 (on the 60-odd test shots I took) but it seemed to fire on completely random photos, not dependent on the environment whatsoever.

So TL:DR there is a reason Sony does not recommend Maxxum flashes for the NEX series. I only know for a fact that the 3200i has this problem, but I would steer clear of purchasing Maxxum flashes for an NEX camera if I were you.