I am wondering if others have had problems with their off-camera flash set-up and if so, how they work to detect and correct it.

Let me explain. I use the EOS A2 with the 540EZ mounted on a Pro-T bracket. The Canon TTL cable connects the flash and body. My specialty is shooting action sports, so the camera does get banged around some. What I ahve noticed is, at times, the flash seems to not be working with the camera. The best example I can give is from last weekend where I shot for 4 hours and then thought we were done, so I took the system apart to return home. Discovered there was another 45 minutes of events left, so I re-assembled the system and continued shooting. Now for the kicker. The film from the previous day, and the film from after I reassembled the system, but NOT the bulk of my work, turned out. The bulk of hte work was vastly underexposed, looking like the flash did not work. I do not recall NOT seeing the flash sync symbol during any of this time. I will admit my primary indication is the shutter speed jumps from 180 to 200, and not looking for the lightning rod.

Previous problems were little things like the cable on the hot shoe was not on all the way or the flash had slid back off the mount some. Unfortunately I do not recall how I noticed there was a problem.

Have others had this problem? How do you detect it? Or is it simply a matter of having to constantly re-check the system?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

-- David Primm (dprimm@isunet.net), April 21, 1999

Answers

David: Are you in fact using the Canon "off camera shoe cord 2" or the longer cable that requires using the additional connectors to link up the cord, camera and flash? If you don't need this extra cord length, this is a very expensive setup. One of those "connectors" requires a battery. (I can't recall if my off camera shoe cord 2 requires a battery). If you're just moving the flash a few inches from the camera with a bracket, the off camera shoe cord 2 is the way to go, because it maintains all flash functions such as A-TTL; the function of the 540 on the OCSC 2 is identical to having the flash directly on the camera's hot shoe-- you lose nothing in terms of function (not so with the other setup). I have used my 540 with an A2 and a 1n, and have never had a failure while using the 540 with or w/o the OCSC 2 EXCEPT if I accidently happened to not correctly fit the shoes into their proper locked positions where all contacts were perfectly lined up. If not, I have noticed that the flash may fire but something may go awry as evidenced by data not displaying correctly on the flash data back. When I see this, I know to check my connections carefully, and then, sure enough, the correct data then displays. So, it is wise to press the shutter half way after mounting the flash gear to see if the camera and flash are correctly talking to one another. Further test this by changing camera settings and looking for the flash data to change accordingly.

-- kurt heintzelman (heintzelman.1@osu.edu), April 22, 1999.

I had a few problems with my 540EZ; the flash head didn't zoom, and the exposure just wasn't right. It seems that I hadn't tightened down the wheel on the flash foot; once I did, it started zooming again and subsequent rolls were well exposed. There was no obvious sign that it wasn't working right (except of course for the lack of zooming); I guess that's just something to add to our "ready to shoot?" checklist.

-- Matt Orth (morth@erols.com), April 26, 1999.