Adding a cold/hot shoe to a Pentax 67 prism

Hey all,

Has anyone successfully put a cold, or hot, shoe onto a Pentax 67 prism? Cold shoe is fine, as I could run a short cord from the PC port to the Pocketwizard

I'm trying to get a roundabout way of not needing the huge wooden grip(with a cord).

thx,
Dan

There are petite rails with 1/4" screw and cold shoe to mount under the camera.

The finder/body connection is not the best designed anyway. A heavy flash would put more strain on it.


But as you asked:
Get yourself a cold/hot shoe and mount it on a brass bracket. Bent into a V-form with a horizontal part to take the shoe. Glue all onto the prism.

1) take a piece of balsa wood and carve/sand a small base to the complimentary angle of the rear slope of the prism (thereby putting the top of the balsa base parallel with the world)

2) with ONE drop of CA glue, attach that block of balsa to the prism where the angle is correct

3) with ONE drop of CA, glue the shoe to the flat top of the block of balsa

4) test it, and if you like it, cut it off, clean off the balsa from both the prism and the shoe, and replace it with a piece of basswood or walnut or oak carved/sanded to the same angle

5) then do the same thing again only this time leave it on and use TWO drops of CA between the parts

6) Wein used to make a hot shoe with a ~12 inch PC cord; maybe they still do; I have one from years ago; it’s for safe use of high voltage strobes (i.e. Vivitar 285...) on low voltage camera bodies

7) with a strobe that is not too heavy it should work fine!

8) make sure to get some CA Debonder in case you want to take everything apart; the prism surface will come clean and no one will ever know the glue was there; you’ll need it for step 4 above anyway

9) if you wanted to get real fancy, you could take the oak model part to a machinist and have an aluminum part copied, then black anodize it and you’d have a pro job!

10) if you’ve never worked with CA (cyanoacrylate) glue before, run plenty of tests before you do the final mating of parts; it’s marvelous stuff – but dangerous if not handled correctly; your local hobby shop has a number of grades; get the slowest setting CA they have; it will set in 15-30 seconds giving you time to make sure things are just where you want them to be

Perry

Thanks fellas, I'll start looking at things once I have the body/ prism in-hand this next week.
Maybe I'll just resort to using a patch of velcro instead. We'll see

cheers,
Dan

You really need to see for yourself how much space is inside the prism. If there is enough space inside you can easily make something that you can bolt onto the top of the prism, or even around it if the space is at the sides, but trusting to glue isn't the way to make even a semi professional job of it (speaking as somebody who uses CA glues every working day)

Steve

You do not need to use just CA glue.

Is there a way you could mount it where the grip would mount? You may be able to fashion a metal bracket that is smaller and lighter than the wooden grip you do not want on the camera, and bend it to position the flash where you would like. Add a little paint, and perhaps some felt where it might contact the camera.

What's wrong with using the grip that Pentax designed for it? Use it only when you use the flash, and you may find that you like the handle for a better grip always.

Truzi said:

Is there a way you could mount it where the grip would mount? You may be able to fashion a metal bracket that is smaller and lighter than the wooden grip you do not want on the camera, and bend it to position the flash where you would like. Add a little paint, and perhaps some felt where it might contact the camera.

Click to expand...

That grip uses the two bolts at the left side to fasten the strap-clips plus an additional arresting bolt at the mirror-box.
Of course one could make for instance from sheet aluminiun a holder that could be fitted and arrested at these bolts.


But this, as mounting at the prism, bears no advantages to just using an old commercial readymade rail-with-flash-shoe from the rummage box, as I indicated before.

For larger, hammerhead flashes one would use their propriatory rails anyway.

There are small ball-socket flash mounts. I dont know what they were used for, but you might find a way to mount it on the handle mounting hardware.

Or, Olympus made flash shoes that mounted on the prism of the camera. you would only need to epoxy it onto another prism. -Unfortunately those mounts had a plastic base, to they were prone to cracking.

AgX said:

You do not need to use just CA glue.

Click to expand...

You are correct even if it isn't what you meant. Using a contact adhesive on one side of the joint and a CA adhesive on the other gives an incredibly strong join with the flexibility of one and the strength of the other. The combination also causes the bond to develop instantly. But you don't want a potentially effective join when mounting a device on the pentaprism, you want a solid platform where the last thing you need to worry about is it falling off.

Steve

I find CA glues nasty stuff, I hardly use. Instead I use epoxy-glues. It gives you time to place and correct and to fill slits. And you can gain a really nice seam.

What do you mean by combining contact glue with CA glue?

AgX said:

There are petite rails with 1/4" screw and cold shoe to mount under the camera.

Click to expand...

The screw thread is located under the mirror box. Thus such rail would not interfere with the two film-spool locks at the underside.

I use a lot of velcro and since it's already on all my PWs I decided to put some on my chimney finder, penta & metering prisms. It's functional, maybe it will work for you.
Or you could add it to the side of the camera.

It's already been mentioned, but the standard hardwood detachable grip has a hot shoe on it. These are still easy to find.

Ooop, Sorry Daniel.... I just noticed you want something different than the grip. There are also generic flash holders which bolt into the tripod
thread from below, if you plan to work handheld. I've done it this way, though I haven't used that particular attachment in decades and don't
even remember where it is stored. I almost never use flash. But these did allow easy reorientation of the flash gun from vertical to horizontal, or extra space for a diffuser head.

Careful with sticking a flash on the top- the prism attachment isn't the most secure thing in the world

GarageBoy said:

Careful with sticking a flash on the top- the prism attachment isn't the most secure thing in the world

Click to expand...

I'm not planning on sticking a flash on the shoe, just a Pocketwizard at the most. But I'd want to make it strong, nonetheless...

Pocketwizard would connect to the body with a PC cord

But why not use a rail?

If I wanted to attach this transmitter on top of the camera I would use patches of velcro-like single-gender adhesive patches attached to that thing and the prism housing.