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Did camera's originally come with hot shoe covers?
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 11:59 am    Post subject: Did camera's originally come with hot shoe covers? Reply with quote
A quick question. These days if you buy a new camera it always (I think that's true?) has a little plastic thing you insert into your hotshoe to keep it covered when not in use.

None of my film camera's have one, and the pictures in the manuals that I have seen for these camera's don't show these being installed.

So my question is this: If you bought a new camera in the 1970's or 1980's, would it have come with a hotshoe cover, or is that something that started to be added later?

Regards, C.


PostPosted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 1:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
None of the cameras I bought in the 80's/90's came with a hot shoe cover.

Do bear in mind that nowadays the 'hot shoe' often also has a row of miniature contacts for proprietary accessories (e.g. the SONY Multi Interface Shoe, see image below). The main flash contact(s) in a hot shoe are quite robust and not too sensitive to dust, but the proprietary miniature connector hidden in the hot shoe generally needs to be kept clean and protected from excessive dust ingress, hence the cover I assume.



DDd, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Sony_mi_acessory_shoe.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sony_mi_acessory_shoe.jpg


PostPosted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 2:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
RokkorDoctor wrote:
None of the cameras I bought in the 80's/90's came with a hot shoe cover.

Do bear in mind that nowadays the 'hot shoe' often also has a row of miniature contacts for proprietary accessories (e.g. the SONY Multi Interface Shoe, see image below). The main flash contact(s) in a hot shoe are quite robust and not too sensitive to dust, but the proprietary miniature connector hidden in the hot shoe generally needs to be kept clean and protected from excessive dust ingress, hence the cover I assume.


Thank you, that makes sense. My Olympus E-M1 Mk.II doesn't have any contacts in the hot shoe and looks pretty much the same in that respect as my film cameras. I can see how companies started including those to protect the contacts, and if a camera doesn't have any extra contacts there they might include a hot shoe cover anyway so as not to appear as though something were missing.

But no reason then for me to replace missing hot shoe covers for my film camera's if they were never there.

Regards, C.


PostPosted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 2:41 pm    Post subject: Re: Did camera's originally come with hot shoe covers? Reply with quote
connloyalist wrote:

So my question is this: If you bought a new camera in the 1970's or 1980's, would it have come with a hotshoe cover?

Regards, C.


With my (cheap) Mamiya SLRs i bought around 1984: Yes! I don't remember about my first Minolta 9000 though ...

In earlier days (especially 1950s to 1970s) the hotshoe cover was meant to protect the photographer from the high voltages produced by many early electron flashes. Some of them could be pretty nasty, releasing trigger voltages of >500V via their cable connectors. Depending on the construction of the corresponding camera, these voltages would end up at the hot shoe too. Thus the protection!

S


PostPosted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 2:56 pm    Post subject: Re: Did camera's originally come with hot shoe covers? Reply with quote
stevemark wrote:

With my (cheap) Mamiya SLRs i bought around 1984: Yes! I don't remember about my first Minolta 9000 though ...

In earlier days (especially 1950s to 1970s) the hotshoe cover was meant to protect the photographer from the high voltages produced by many early electron flashes. Some of them could be pretty nasty, releasing trigger voltages of >500V via their cable connectors. Depending on the construction of the corresponding camera, these voltages would end up at the hot shoe too. Thus the protection!

S


Interesting, I didn't know that. You don't say which model Mamiya SLR it was, but looking at the instructions of (randomly) the Mamiya ZE it does indeed show a hot shoe cover.

Regards, C.


PostPosted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 3:26 pm    Post subject: Re: Did camera's originally come with hot shoe covers? Reply with quote
connloyalist wrote:
stevemark wrote:

With my (cheap) Mamiya SLRs i bought around 1984: Yes! I don't remember about my first Minolta 9000 though ...

In earlier days (especially 1950s to 1970s) the hotshoe cover was meant to protect the photographer from the high voltages produced by many early electron flashes. Some of them could be pretty nasty, releasing trigger voltages of >500V via their cable connectors. Depending on the construction of the corresponding camera, these voltages would end up at the hot shoe too. Thus the protection!

S


Interesting, I didn't know that. You don't say which model Mamiya SLR it was, but looking at the instructions of (randomly) the Mamiya ZE it does indeed show a hot shoe cover.

Regards, C.


Yep, it was ZE and ZM I was talking about.

S


PostPosted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 8:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Canon A Series cameras came with a hot shoe cover which primarily served as an viewfinder cover and as an aid for opening the battery compartment.





PostPosted: Mon Jul 29, 2024 12:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
They seem to have appeared with most early forms of TTL flash control cameras with their lowered voltage flash trigger systems.
I think the first I saw was on college room-mate's Minolta X-700. The soft plastic on them wore down rapidly on the edges where they were meant to be gripped by the hot-shoe's springs, and they fell off the camera quite easily after 2 or 3 uses. IIRC, the first I saw on a nikon was on the FE-2, but that is a long ago memory, and likely not 100% reliable.

-D.S.


PostPosted: Mon Jul 29, 2024 6:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
I have an 80s Kiev 4AM with clear plastic hot shoe cover with logo.

Ill take a picture if I find it.


PostPosted: Mon Jul 29, 2024 9:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
In a twist, Spotmatics came with tiny covers for the X and FP flash connection terminals, I think to protect from shock due to high-voltage hotshoe-mounted flash.
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