Okay, I found a partial answer -- in case anyone else was also wondering. I
contacted Pentax-USA tech support, and spoke to a gentleman named Mark. He
claimed that although he didn't remember the exact voltage specs, that they
were impressively high in his opinion -- on the order of at least several
HUNDRED volts! He assured me that he had used Pentax DSLRs with old hotshoe
flashes, as well as old studio flashes, which had hundreds of volts at their
sync terminals.
This is contrary to what the camera store sales people had led me to believe.
Mark said that was a common misconception, most likely based upon mere
assumption. Some other DSLRs have trouble with the high voltage, so camera
sales people like to play it safe and tell everyone to avoid the old flash
gear on their new cameras.
Before I tried the old flash, I asked Mark if by some chance the flash were
to fry the *istDS, could I have the camera repaired under warranty, and of
course he said "No." However, he was convinced that the camera should handle
it. After being reassured that it should handle my ancient Sunpak flash, I
very nervously gave it a try. It works! :)
I don't have any of the nice dedicated features with this flash, but it sure
beats the popup flash for power! This will be a big help, till I can get one
of the new flashes someday. (It also saves me a good amount of money for the
immediate future.)
So, I still don't know the true voltage and current specs for the hotshoe,
but at least I know it works with my old higher-voltage Sunpak flash. I'm
both surprised and delighted.
You talked to Mark at Pentax as well? I called tech support
awhile back and he took about a week to get back to me.... apparently had
to talk with the engineers to get the specs. Being an idiot, I didn't
write it down in any good place, but I'm pretty sure that the sticky note
on my monitor that reads only, "480V, 1.26A" is the one that refers to the
*ist-DS. They've probably just got an SCR (or perhaps a MOSFET) in there
to run it... and that's the rating on the device.
I, too, was worried about the voltage. My old Vivitar 2600
measures about 190v when charged. After reading this, I haven't hesitated
to put it on and I've used it hundreds of times.
-Cory
--
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* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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