hot shoe question

[roflchopter]

Hi, I own an EX-F1, which is probably looked down on on this forum. Anyway, I contacted Casio, and the max voltage for the hot shoe is 6v but I am comfortable modding a flash with an SCR to drop it to this level if need be.

I wanted an auto-Thyristor flash with tilt and hopefully manual control (1/128 would be nice) The cheapest flashes that fit the bill are dedicated flashes for Canon/Nikon/whatever. Will they sync with my EX-F1, which has a simple hot shoe(the one contact and then the actual metal bracket thing)?

Also, some of these flashes are advertised as TTL. Do they have a sensor in them to cut off the flash like a Vivitar 283, or will the absence of the TTL contact on the hotshoe cause the flash to fire with excessive power?

Right now I am looking at a Sunpak PZ5000AF. If anyone can recommend a better flash that could be had used for ~$50, that would be welcome too.

Thanks

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[Garbz]

Any modern flash and by that I mean more recent than about 1970s will satisfy the less than 6V requirement. And even then there are "safesync" connectors which can be had for cheap so there really is no point in DIY rigging a new high voltage trigger.

All flashes can be triggered by shorting just the centre contacts to the outside ring, including fancy modern TTL flashes. But the problem is you do lose a LOT of the features you would pay for like TTL metering, the ability to do High Speed Sync at a speed faster than your shutter sync limit, and any wireless features controlled by the camera.

But yeah Photo Strobe Trigger Voltages states the Sunpak has a 5V sync.

[roflchopter]

Thanks, although I am not sure you understood my question. Do TTL flashes have a built in sensor like the 283 (just a random example) to cut off the flash as necessary, or does it depend exclusively on the TTL function? In other words, if I trigger the flash off camera into a mirror will the flash fire at full power, or less than that?