Troubleshooting My Flash?

[Bill Burk]

I think you should play it safe and choose the 60 on the shutter speed dial instead of A when you are using flash.

 

[AgX]

Then likely the shutter would be synchronized correctly, but the flash still would need wobbling in its shoe to fire at all.

The XG-9 needs either a correctly dedicated flash or a non-dedicated flash.

 

[Dan Fromm]

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.

 

[shutterfinger]

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.

 

[John Koehrer]

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.

 

[wiltw]

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.

 

[Chan Tran]

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!

The Minolta Auto 320X is 100% compatible with the XG9 but I have used Nikon SB-15 on my XD-11 and used the 320X on my Nikon camera without problem.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Shutter sync speed.

Your shutter speed needs to be slower. Probably 1/60th.

Exactly. You need to use the proper sync speed for focal plane shutters. Probably 1/60 second based on the many Minoltas that I owned.

 

[wiltw]

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 found a 550FC with M/P/O in an ad on ebay, and the photo of the foot seems to match the foot of the OP flash unit.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vivitar-550...olta-Pentax-Olympus-with-Manual-/222013573159

 

[AgX]

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.

The accessory contact next to the trigger contact can also set the shutter at synchro speed.
I even think in most cases this is its primary task.

 

[removed account4]

When I bought my Minolta XG-9 at a thrift store ages ago

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