Canon 430ex Lifespan

[cjbryant]

I have been looking all over but could not find the answer that I was looking

for. Maybe someone can help me...

 

What is the lifespan of the 430 ex flash (how many flashes)? When (if) the bulb

does go out, is there a way to replace it?

 

 

Thanks

 

Curtiss

[philg]

Interesting question. The high-power tubes in studio strobes definitely age, often with a color shift that upsets catalog photographers, and then die. I think some wedding photographers manage to fry their small flashes by using external battery packs, which have enough power that the flash doesn't have enough time to cool between exposures. I haven't seen a shoe-mount flash with a tube that failed due to overuse. Most of my experience was in the film days, though, when taking 100,000 exposures would have cost more than reformatting a memory card.

 

I don't think any Canon flash has a user-replaceable tube.

[JosvanEekelen]

I still have a 199A flash unit which is now 27 years old and still going strong. I have no idea about the number of flashes though. There have been reports on how to change the flash tumbe, if I'm not mistaken also on PN. It seems that the biggest abuse of a hotshoe flash is (a) a rapid succession of a large number of burst in a short time and (b) not using a flash for a prolonged period of time.

[johnson_d.]

I've often wondered this myself. I did find a published number for studio strobes that claim a 50,000 to 100,000 flash tube life.

 

http://www.white-lightning.com/wl5kand10k.html

 

This of course means nothing with regards to the 430ex. I have at least 10k flashes on a 430ex. That's something I guess. I have a feeling that I'll mechanically break something (by dropping it for example) long before the tube blows. Either way, they're cheap to replace in the grand scheme of things.

[mark u]

Here's how to replace the tube on a 550EX and save a significant repair bill:

 

http://home.fuse.net/pets/EOS/550EX/550ex.htm

 

I imagine the procedure for a 430EX would be very similar. A break from a drop is probably much more likely than a tube failure, unless the tube was faulty to begin with, in which case it would likely fail quite quickly and be repairable under warranty. Since the flash is produced by gas discharge, colour temperature is only affected by ageing of the glass or reduced capacitor charge.

[peter_steeper]

I had two 420ex flashes and one of them died after 18 months due to electronic problems and the other is fine. Canon wanted $200 CDN to fix the flash (this seems to be their standard minimum charge) so I bought a new 430ex. The 430ex is a much better flash.

[steve_dunn2]

<p>I'm sure that eventually the tube, or occasionally some other part, will wear out. But I've been hanging out here, and in the rec.photo.* newsgroups, for years. People complain about anything and everything, and in particular they complain about equipment that breaks. And while I have seen some people complaining about the flash tube in their flash dying, there haven't been a lot of those - and at least some of them have been from people who induced failure (not intentionally, of course) by overheating the flash (too frequent use, hacking it to use an external power supply, not heeding the warning in the manual about letting it cool down after using modeling flash, etc.).</p>

 

<p>So unless you plan on abusing it, the flash will probably last so long that it's not worth worrying about it.</p>