Having Canon flash problems... again...

[bazooka]

So I was fairly confident that my 550EX was bad. I made a similar post about this issue about a month ago. Here's what it's doing...

It will not trigger my slaved 580EXII when in M or ETTL. When set to Master and on the camera, ETTL doesn't function properly. 9/10 times it won't flash, but when it does, it fires at full power, completely blowing out the shot. When set to Master and Manual, it will fire correctly everytime.

When I turn the Master/Slave switch to "Off", ETTL works fine as does Manual on the 550EX.

If I use the 580EXII as my on-camera master, in ETTL it will trigger the 550EX maybe once every 30 shots. Inconsistent is an understatement But the 580EXII now also has the tendency to not contribute to the exposure (I can see the preflash fire but no flash light is visible in exposure). I get a proper exposure maybe once every 3 or 4 shots. As with the 550EX, if I turn off the 580EXII wireless, it works flawlessly.

So this morning, I borrowed a coworker's 430EX, but I had the same results using both of my flashes as master and his as slave. Actually, I couldn't get his to fire at all (he bought it new so I doubt it's a problem on his end).

This leads me to the conclusion that either there is something wrong with my camera or my lens or BOTH of my flashes (both purchased used, but different sellers), or I don't freaking know what I'm doing. I've read the manuals and I've been using Manual optical slaves comfortably for quite sometime now. I'm just getting very frustrated.

Any ideas? I hope this isn't asking too much, but if anyone in the Houston area would be willing to let me meet up with them to show me how it's supposed to work, let me know. I don't know what else to do besides sending both flashes to Canon and letting them verify they are in working order...

[adamsheehy]

I'd gladly meet up with you to go over this, but I'm up in Boston.

I read through your posting a while back and it was honestly a little hard to follow only b/c I couldn't tell which flash you were talking about some of the time. Seemed like you had everything working by the end of it though.

Have you checked the settings on the camera for the external speedlite? What shooting mode are you using on the camera? M? Av?

Do you have a radio trigger by any chance? If you did, you could possibly isolate the flashes from the camera to narrow down the problem.

Can you pull the batteries out of the flashes to reset to their defaults and simply put the 550ex into slave and then 580ex to master (both in default A group)? I'm sure you've already tried just about everything, but just thinking to start out simple and see where the problems arise.

[swjim]

Are you shooting indoors or outdoors? IR communication can be pretty fickle when shooting outdoors.

[bazooka]

Shooting indoors, low light, flashes are within feet of each other. I've tried pointing at each other, pointing at same object, pointed at a wall, etc...

Adam, yeah, I have the tendency to jumble up my thoughts and make posts longer than they need to be. I'm just trying to let you all know that I've tried a lot of troubleshooting and trying to avoid the "Did you turn the power on?" kind of suggestions. :)

On the camera, I'm using M. But let's just take the camera out of the equation...

If I have both flashes in my hand, on M, Channel 1. One is set to Master, one is set to slave, and they are looking right at each other's sensor. If I hit the pilot button on the master, it should trigger the slave to flash at the set output, right? But it doesn't, regardless of which one is master and which one is slave.

Even testing with my friends 430EX, same results. Leads me to believe I'm doing something wrong, or I have astronomic bad luck and bought two used flashes from two different people at different times/places, and have the same problem that I've not heard of anyone else having.

[bazooka]

So I just walked down to my co-worker who has the 430EX just to check my head (because this is driving me nuts).

580EXII in one hand, 430EX in the other. 430 on slave, Manual, 1/32 power, channel 1. 580 set to Master 1/64 (later tried 1/8), Manual, Channel 1. Making sure I wasn't covering up the sensors with my hand, I held the flashes from 1 - 3 feet apart and only got the 430 EX to flash twice out of maybe 20 or 30 tries. Does Canon wireless really suck that bad??

[adamsheehy]

The fact that you're getting the 430ex to actually fire this time is at least a step in the right direction in terms of nailing down the problem - it's very useful info.

You should really have everything on tripods or in locked positions to make sure that movement, angle or distance isn't affecting anything (causing variation in results).

Do you happen to have an 'E' in the top left corner of the display of the 580exII?

[bazooka]

No "E". The only E I've ever seen up there was in the "ETTL" which is not the mode I was shooting in on this test. I'm guessing "E" would indicate an error of some sort, but I have never seen it on either the 580 or the 550.

[adamsheehy]

Originally Posted by bazooka

No "E". The only E I've ever seen up there was in the "ETTL" which is not the mode I was shooting in on this test. I'm guessing "E" would indicate an error of some sort, but I have never seen it on either the 580 or the 550.

No, it's an indicator for external metering, which is an automatic function of the 580exII when it's enabled - was just thinking that the flash was automatically metering and only triggering the slave occasionally, depending upon where you were aiming the flash. I wasn't (still not) sure if this feature was reset when pulling the batteries. Have you reset each flash to default by just going into the custom function menu? I'm not sure off the top of my head, but you could probably easily look it up.

[bazooka]

Ah, gotcha. I just checked the 580EXII custom settings and they're all default. I left my 550EX home today so I'll have to check it when I get home. I'm glad you're coming up with things I haven't thought of though. I really appreciate your time.

[adamsheehy]

Originally Posted by bazooka

Ah, gotcha. I just checked the 580EXII custom settings and they're all default. I left my 550EX home today so I'll have to check it when I get home. I'm glad you're coming up with things I haven't thought of though. I really appreciate your time.

I saw this last month and was going to jump in, but it looked like you had gotten some issues resolved. Now I'm just determined to figure out the cause of the problem.

Not sure how much time you want to spend, but could you list the numbers you're seeing for each custom fx setting (1-13)? Also, would you be able to snap a cellphone pic of your display and post it here and/or the 430ex too in case anything jumps out at anyone? Dont worry about it if it's a pain.

[bazooka]

Sure, I'm willing to try anything at this point. All the custom settings on the 580EXII are set to "0". I had the first one set to "1" which changed from meters to feet, but I changed it back to "0" anyway as I've never used the distance meter.

I'll try to get the lights on stands tonight and shoot the LCD on both units and the results. It won't be with the 430 though, I don't want to wear out my welcome borrowing his flash every day. :) I'll set up the 550 though.

[bazooka]

Ok, I had the slave on a Justin clamp on a desk about 5 feet away, and the master in front of me on a light stand.

First test was 550EX as master, 580EXII as slave.




I fired 30 times for each test by hitting the Pilot button when it indicated it was ready. It triggered the slave 4 times out of 30. Interesting to note that the 4 successful triggers were among the first 6 attempts. After that, nothing.

I switched the flashes positions and roles.





Out of 30 fires, I got 14 successful triggers. This was suprising to me as I've never had that much success before. But it's still less than 50% which is disappointing. The successful triggers seemed to be randomly spread throughout this test, unlike the first test.

I tried out ETTL on my wife's XTi with the 580EXII as master, and had about the same success rate as off camera firing. But I didn't properly record the results because I figured it'd probably only confuse the issue further.

[adamsheehy]

Cool, thanks for posting those pics. Everything looks good - just wanted to make sure there wasn't something screwy looking. Did you happen to check the settings on the 550ex in the custom functions? Were you waiting for both pilot lights to go on or were you just waiting for the master to go on when firing? ~ how many seconds apart was each test fire?

If I have time I'll run a few tests on mine like you did before I go to bed. Will keep thinking about solutions....

Edit: I tested my 580exII and a 580ex last night successfully and couldn't think of much that would be causing this. I read over the entire 550ex manual briefly and nothing really jumped out as a possible culprit. :/

Can you remove the red plastic covering over the sensors to see if anything looks dirty and/or leave them off altogether for a few tests?

[bazooka]

I did check the 550EX settings and they are all default "0".

The slave light next to the sensor never stopped blinking so I think it never fully discharged and I was running 1/64 power. However, my batteries on my 580 were getting low so I was having to wait a second or two after each fire.

How do I take the red filter off?

[adamsheehy]

Originally Posted by bazooka

I did check the 550EX settings and they are all default "0".

The slave light next to the sensor never stopped blinking so I think it never fully discharged and I was running 1/64 power. However, my batteries on my 580 were getting low so I was having to wait a second or two after each fire.

The recycle time would be pretty quick on a slave that's not really firing at 1/64, so you probably wouldn't even notice an absence of blinking.

Originally Posted by bazooka

How do I take the red filter off?

Um, carefully? lol It's the top one on the 580exII, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to remove and clean everything. That's probably not your problem at all at this point - I'm just trying to think of anything, so I wouldn't spend too much time on it if you can't get them off. I've just used my fingernail or small screwdriver, but don't use much force at all since they can break with too much pressure.