Cheap slave shoe
Cheap slave shoe
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3
The Panasonic Lumix camera DMC-LX3 is similar to her Leica counterpart, save the hot shoe. That means the LX-3 can use both the internal flash, as well as an external flash.
For the external flash, in my case, the Minolta Auto 280 PX, at first I did not succeed in using it with a slave flash in conjunction with the Lumix. A $2 chinese external slave flash shoe (the form factor shown to the right) did not do the trick; it wouldn't even fire the 280-PX flash at all.
To get a more reliable way to extended flash range, I decideed to buy a Hama slave flash shoe. In a first attempt, it seemed the Hama shoe was too slow; I did not get a flash from the external one, regardless of the shutter speed. The slave flashe flashed nevertheless.
Hama slave unit (with separate hot shoe)
Also, the 280-PX should fit the hot shoe directly and work with it. Not with me, or so it seemed. Although the 'external flash' icon appeared in the Lumix viewer, regardless of the settings, it just wouldn't fire the external flash.
Finally I had some luck. In various forms, it was said that the 280PX should be capable of working in conjunction with the Lumix lx3. That pushed me to trying again. First, the Hama shoe again, nothing seemed to work.
The Minolta cameras can be operated with a winder and when the winder is at high speed, there is little time to charge the flash. So one can choose to use a low winder speed or a high winder speed. It happens that all my tests had been done with high winder sync. When I switched the winder sinc from Hi (high speed, little charge) to Lo (low speed, high charge), it appeared to do the trick. Most of the time, the Auto 280 seemed to fire when the Lumix was flashing.
Minolta 280 PX external flash
That gave hope for using the 280PX on the hot shoe. So I mounted the flash on the hot shoe, this time with low winder sync switched on. Nothing. Too bad? Did the external-flash icon appear in the viewfinder? Yes, but it was white when I pushed the button halfway (focusing). I decided to fiddle a bit more with the mounting of the flash in the shoe and fired again, after I noticed the flash icon turning red and lo and behold: the flash fired.
Now this was in manual position, with 1/60th shutter time. Would it work with other settings too? I tried 2 seconds down to 1/2000 th and they all worked without a hitch.
Then I changed the mode dial from manual to aperture preference, shutter speed preference, program and even intelligent auto; they all worked. After unmounting the flash and remounting it again later that day, the flash seemed to have stopped working. Messing a bit with the ring that is used to screw the flash tightly to the shoe fortunately brought back life to the flash.