Jack Up Your Vivitar 285HV

The Vivitar 285HV is a decent option for people looking for a new, inexpensive, manual-capable flash with an external PC jack. But one minor annoyance is the proprietary sync jack.

(C'mon, Vivitar folks. Get a clue already.)

Strobist reader Nathan Kerr has posted a tutorial on how to swap out the weird sync jack for a 3.5mm mono female minijack. This means that you can easily connect a Pocket Wizard, for instance, with a $3.99 mono audio patch cord from Radio Shack.

Much better than being held hostage by the Vivitar Sync Cord Mafia.

I am a big fan of cheap, elegant solutions to problems like this. And the soldering is really pretty straightforward if you are comfy with an iron.

As always, beware the electrical guts of an electronic flash. And don't go licking any capacitors.