Long story but someone last year gave me this novelty miniature umbrella that slots onto the hot shoe-he had seen me shooting in the rain with my camera in a plastic bag. So right there I grinned and put the silly thing on my camera and that was that-I was NEVER going to use this silly thing it was ridiculous but the guy meant well. but here is the CAUTIONARY TALE: Your hot shoe has a tiny pin under the metal bracket that is depressed down when you slot something into the hot shoe, a moving part. When it is pressed down the in-camera flash will NOT OPERATE. you can't even access the internal flash control settings. Mine got stuck and from that day on my pop up flash was no longer functioning so I took the hot shoe off, found the little pin and wiggled it upwards using tweezers. But this DID NOT WORK and the flash remained inoperative. I got used to shooting without the flash until last week I was out shooting outside early one morning and it POPPED UP BY ITSELF after a year of not functioning. the flash fired and I was delighted. But when I got home the camera did not recognize the flash again, boo-hoo. Until late in the afternoon yesterday when it suddenly started working outdoors again. It shot fine and the menu for internal flash controls was available agin. I instantly guessed it was the cold temperature that shrank an internal component enough to let the mechanism function again. I tested this by bringing it back indoors and using an infrared thermometer to take temperature readings off the camera body while opening and closing the flash every few seconds and when the temperature got to about 60 degrees the functionality was lost again. So my flash works only when the camera is cold.