i have a strange problem. it seems that when i have my 380ex speedlite mounted on my elan iie (both turned on of course) that the camera's autofocus assist light aids the autofocus instead of the speedlite's. has anyone had this problem before or have any guesses as to what could be the problem? thanks.

-- Jeff Nakayama (moonduck22@hotmail.com), December 11, 2001

Answers

The 380EX's assist light works only if you manually select the centre focussing point (I read somewhere that it did work with the centre point using eye-controlled foccussing but I've never got it to work). The AF assist on the 380 does not cover all three focus points - only the centre point.

If you really want/need to use a flash unit AF assist instead of the camera mounted one (not desparate on the 50E but more critical when the camera AF assist is white light) then the 420EX or 550EX will cover all focus points - and work with eye controlled focus point selection.

I've just got a D30 (with white light AF assist). I'm going to use either a 420EX or 550EX so that I don't get the awful (distracting) white light of the camera AF assist.

John.

-- John Matthews (john@matthews-net.org.uk), December 12, 2001.