Flash not going in sync with camera...?

Ricky91t

Well i shoot a canon eos 20D and a sigma EF500 DG SUPER which has all the setting and is meant to be on the same level as the canon 420ex,I was shooting photos for a website pres release lastnight and 3 photos of 20 came out totally black,but the flash went off and shutter at near the same time,Anyone know is this a known issue with all flashguns or is it just sigma :rolleyes:


Cheers all

Calina

ricky, I am not a flash expert (feeling my way) but one of the things that happened me last night was the occasional continuous shooting moment where the first shot was illuminated by the flash but the second one wasn't because the flash hadn't recovered yet.

Any chance something that happened you?

Ricky91t

Calina wrote: »

ricky, I am not a flash expert (feeling my way) but one of the things that happened me last night was the occasional continuous shooting moment where the first shot was illuminated by the flash but the second one wasn't because the flash hadn't recovered yet.

Any chance something that happened you?

I was thinking it might be that but i don't shoot continuous when people are involved

Maybe 3-4 seconds between each shot,my battery's were charged fully and i only shot 5 or 6 pics before.

murpho999

I had that problem before and discovered I had ISO accidently at 1000. Dropped it down to 100 and it was fine.

Don't know if this helps at all.

DaireQuinlan

ricky91t wrote: »

Well i shoot a canon eos 20D and a sigma EF500 DG SUPER which has all the setting and is meant to be on the same level as the canon 420ex,I was shooting photos for a website pres release lastnight and 3 photos of 20 came out totally black,but the flash went off and shutter at near the same time,Anyone know is this a known issue with all flashguns or is it just sigma :rolleyes:Cheers all

Were you shooting at some speed above the flash sync speed ? Anything over 1/250 will give you banding at best or a completely black frame at worst.

Borderfox

Depends on the power output, you could have been using a lot of fill and the recycle couldnt keep up. It happens to me even with a battery pack sometimes..

Rojo

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Were you shooting at some speed above the flash sync speed ? Anything over 1/250 will give you banding at best or a completely black frame at worst.

Beat me to it! I'd nearly guarantee you're going over the sync speed.

DaireQuinlan

murpho999 wrote: »

I had that problem before and discovered I had ISO accidently at 1000. Dropped it down to 100 and it was fine.
Don't know if this helps at all.

This is very probably what was happening to yourself aswell, murpho999. Iso 1000 => High shutter speed. So you were probably well over the sync speed.

Ricky91t

Hello all,replying via mobile!(sorry for spelling/Grammar)I was shooting at iso 400 and a shutter speed of 1/60 or maybe 40,i think its what borderfox said!Anyway on a plus note one of the pics got printed in the paper today on page 2 too!Thanks all

shepthedog

Is there a standard flash speed? Should it always be set to 250?

DaireQuinlan

ricky91t wrote: »

Hello all,replying via mobile!(sorry for spelling/Grammar)I was shooting at iso 400 and a shutter speed of 1/60 or maybe 40,i think its what borderfox said!Anyway on a plus note one of the pics got printed in the paper today on page 2 too!Thanks all

I don't think its that simple, you said that the flash went off, but the frames came out black. If you're shooting at below the sync speed and the flash goes off, but the frame isn't illuminated, then there's something wrong with your camera, or your flash, or the contact between the two. Were you using it off camera ? On camera ? Check the contacts between the two to make sure they're mated up properly. Were you shooting using whatever the canon version of TTL flash is ? Thats normally pretty foolproof.

Ricky91t

Yep always make sure the flash is lined up with contacts on camera,shooting on eTTL or whatever the digital flash mode is.And yes its on camera

challengemaster

If you were firing off a few at once, it probably just didn't get time to recycle is all. The things have to get their charge back first before they fire it off again If you just turn on your flash, and fire a few test flashes in succession - after a few it'll need to wait before firing another.

Ricky91t

challengemaster wrote: »

If you were firing off a few at once, it probably just didn't get time to recycle is all. The things have to get their charge back first before they fire it off again If you just turn on your flash, and fire a few test flashes in succession - after a few it'll need to wait before firing another.

I know that and i said in the original post there was 4-5 seconds between,Which is the specifications recycling time,and normally on fresh batteries the flash recharges instantly but maybe it was not feeling the best :P

nilhg

If you post the full EXIF from one of the dark shots it might be easier to figure out what happened.

Ricky91t

nilhg wrote: »

If you post the full EXIF from one of the dark shots it might be easier to figure out what happened.

Will do in two mins ill restart my machine and upload it on flickr

Ricky91t

http://flickr.com/photos/richardtoolan/2884915397/meta/
link to exif data

nilhg

It's private........

Calina

ricky, a copy and paste might be more helpful if you dno't want the photo in public.

Ricky91t

Sorry must of been left like that from last time i uploaded,check now!

If needed i can post the exif and image that the flash worked out on

DaireQuinlan

So the exif data states that the flash fired all right. You might have to just chalk this one down to using a third party flash. Typically with flashes (and lenses to some extent aswell) the third party vendors have to reverse engineer the interfaces. Sometimes there are bugs a glitches in the implementation ...