During the Brussels strobist meet we encountered some low-light situations (gearing towards no-light). The camera’s didn’t really like that and I got thinking about getting an ST-2. But as usual this requires money and why spent money when you’ve got about 6 focus assits in the house? Every flash I have has a focus assist. But what if you don’t want the flash to fire? That’s one thing none of my flashes can actually. So I could’ve taped over the head of the flash but I decided to try and mod my 430EZ. The 430 is not suited for strobist stuff since it has a un-disablable (is that even a word?) sleep function.
First thing I did was to put a post-it on my camera hotshoe to disconnect the centercontact. Just to check if by disabling this the flash wouldn’t fire. No surprise, it didn’t and the other function were still working. (Still amused by the puzzled look on my brother-in-laws face when he took my cam to take a pic and was wondering what the post-it was doing there)
I also decided to add a hotshoe to fit my ebay triggers. Otherwise you’d have to attach the trigger by wire to the pc-sync port and you’d have to find a way to attach the trigger somewhere.
As for how I did it??? Just look at the pics, they explain the rest I guess.