There are a number of adapters that will do it. Photoflex makes one. You can easiy find it on their website. You can also email their tech support & they answer right away.
One of the other options is the Magic Slipper, but it's expensive. Google it.
There's at least one other, for less money. They all do the same thing: Speedlight mounts on a cold shoe (on the dingus) then a Speedring mounts in front of that. The dingus then goes onto your stand. The more expensive dinguses have built-in swivel mounts, and extra flanges or clamps for adjustments & solidity. A few also have a hole for umbrellas.
I'm pretty sure you can use some of these with ANY modifier, i.e. using any Speedring, but I'm not 100% sure about that. You may have to buy proprietary rings, specifically for the dingus (and your specific modifier, of course.
I have a medium photoflex softbox with AB speedring. I just checked and you can attach the bracket in alzo box to the AB speedring, using a longer washers. If you have photoflex speedring for the medium SB, it will have a way to attach directly to the lightstand. You can buy a small L bracket from home depot and drill holes it in to attach your hot shoe flash.
I also have photoflex extra-small SB with their basica plastic speedring and shoe mount adapter. I haven't checked to see if that plastic speedring will fit my medium SB.
Cableaddict wrote:
Interesting. I bought my 580EXII brand new, and this diffusor is not there, but sure enough it IS shown in the manual. They must have had a bad production run.
Regardless, this is STILL not like a bare bulb, but certainly better than nothing.
Thanks for the info.
OT, you can get a replacement part for this wide angle diffuser (clear, translucent, plastic that pulls out, just below the white card) from Canon for under $14 shipped. The part number is:
CY2-4259-000
I know this because I recently noticed mine was gone (they must detach fairly easily?).
Before you call up Canon to order it, be aware that you essentially have to take apart the top part of the head (unless I missed the easy way....and there may be an easy way to just hook that piece back on to the black part that stays within the body of the flash head.) I took mine apart.
The way to do that is to remove the rubber waterproofing seals at the hinge, unscrew 3 screws there on either side, then two screws on top, flip the plastic casing off, then remove the inner flash components to get to the screws deep down that attaches the black plastic piece on the very top of the flash to the main body of the flash head (this is to get to the space where the replacement part goes.) As you pull the innards out, be careful to view the one electronic cabling that slips in to the circuit board you are removing, because that needs to be slipped back in place as you rebuild it. Once that top black plastic piece is off, it's fairly intuitive. And then it's just a matter of rebuilding it. The waterproofing rubber goes back in place without much trouble, in case anyone is wondering.
Although it sounds intimidating, it wasn't that difficult. The one big safety item you would need to be careful about is that even with the batteries out (which I had taken out ahead of time), that flash head has a powerful capacitor that stores up a power punch of electricity. I did feel a shock twice (was careful to make it very brief, as I was expecting it). It makes handling the inner mechanism difficult, as you are quite shy about touching it. That electronic cabling was a bit more difficult to insert due to this.
One big reason to do this, or at least be aware of the issue, is because when you pull out the diffuser, it releases a little button inside (where you can't see) that tells the flash something is different, and not to count on the usual flash calculations (like when you tilt the flash head). So if the piece is not shoved back to very rear, you will see the readout on your LCD flash on and off, telling you the diffuser is in use (doesn't say that, but that is how it notifies you something is different).
Nowhere Man wrote:
bobbyz: Can you check to see if their basica plastic speedring and shoe mount adapter works with the Medium SB you have from Photoflex?
Thanks.
Good news. The plastic speedring which comes with the photoflex extra-small SB fits photoflex medium SB without any problems. Now I can use my hot shoe flash with the bigger box.
