Which 550FD do you have? C/R for Canon/Ricoh? N for Nikon? M/P/O for Minolta/Pentax/Olympus. If you don't have the M/P/O it won't communicate with y'r XG-9 and won't set the shutter speed to 1/60. Just set the shutter speed to 1/60, set the mode selector to A2 for automatic non-TTL.
Get the manuals for camera and flash. Read the manuals.
I have encountered hot shoe contacts that were slightly recessed and did not contact the flash correctly. A light tarnish on the contacts will cause problems.
Take a pencil eraser and burnish the contacts on the camera and the flash, they look dull not bright.
With only two hot shoe connections(unless you count common)*
The flash does only two things.
1)fires the flash (center contact)
2)ready light contact. That's the small offset contact.
*common is the spring at the side of the hot shoe that touches the accessory shoe.
Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. I'll try testing everything out when I'm done with this roll.
Since it may be part of the problem, here's the camera's hotshoe and the connectors for the 550FD
If the camera and the flash just don't play nice, what would be a good all around flash to use for this camera?
It is pretty obvious that the flash foot has more contacts than the flash shoe...Perhaps (pure guess) the foot supports newer same-brand TTL cameras, as well as older (XG9)....But gotta research this. Perhaps the flash is simply not truly compatible with the XG9.
Yeah, I think the root of the problem may just be that the 550FD doesn't work with the XG-9. Them being sold together may have just been a mistake. I think I'll find myself a minolta auto 320x just because one look at those hotshoe connectors and they line up perfectly. Also the manual for both the XG-9 and the 320x have very similar layout, so I assume they were produced around the same time.
Thanks for the recommendation, Chan Tran and cooltouch!
Which 550FD do you have? C/R for Canon/Ricoh? N for Nikon? M/P/O for Minolta/Pentax/Olympus. If you don't have the M/P/O it won't communicate with y'r XG-9 and won't set the shutter speed to 1/60. Just set the shutter speed to 1/60, set the mode selector to A2 for automatic non-TTL.
Get the manuals for camera and flash. Read the manuals.
With only two hot shoe connections(unless you count common)*
The flash does only two things.
1)fires the flash (center contact)
2)ready light contact. That's the small offset contact.
*common is the spring at the side of the hot shoe that touches the accessory shoe.
hey radny
if you haven't found a manual for it http://www.cameramanuals.org/minolta_pdf/minolta_xg-9.pdf
at the end it says flash sync is 1/60th.
if the sync doesn't work after you erase the contacts
maybe a cla might be needed.
have fun!
john