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As I understand it, a hot shoe is proprietary. One form is a Minolta hot shoe. I wonder if there are standards (i.e. IEEE standards). There is also a thing called an accessory shoe. How is it different from a hot shoe? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hatsandcats (talk • contribs) .
imho, every shoe that is able to trigger a flash is a hot shoe. This basic functionality is not proprietary, but standard. The term accessory shoe may refer to a passive shoe without any electrical connection, or - more advanced - to those shoes used on same camcorders which have additional functions, like power supply for lamps, or mic input. Thyl Engelhardt213.70.217.172 (talk) 09:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In the olden days, shoes had no contacts. A common use was to hold accessory viewfinders for rangefinder cameras with interchangeable lenses. Flash sync. was usually with a PC connector. The hot shoe with just flash sync. doesn't seem to be proprietary, but with other contacts, yes. Even more, the other contacts might be in the same position, but otherwise incompatible, between brands. Gah4 (talk) 19:16, 10 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The use of AC trigger seems unlikely, as it would be delayed or fail at zero crossing. In the early days of flash, there were bulbs that could trigger off 120VAC, but the bulbs were slow enough that a small delay wouldn't matter. Is there a documented electronic flash using AC trigger? Otherwise, I do wonder if polarity is close to standard. The triggers for electronic cameras are likely polarity sensitive, but documentation only indicates trigger voltage. Gah4 (talk) 15:27, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
