580ex II Issues and Problems

[claudio_papapietro]

<p>I am just wondering if I got a dud speedlite or others out there have had problems with this flash (I bought mine about a year ago). Some of the lovely features it's partial to are:<br>

1) Not firing at all.<br>

2) Not allowing me to turn on the high-speed sync mode.<br>

3) Giving wildly off exposures -- will fire a full burst and a 1/64 burst of the exact same scene is consecutive frames.<br>

Thanks.</p>

[bobatkins]

<p>It would seem pretty obvious it has a problem and you have a dud.</p>

[cabbiinc]

<p>You don't have it set to master or slave do you?</p>

[bill.akstens]

<p>Item 3) on your list has been reported by many others. There is some mechanical deficiency in the new foot design that creates intermittent contact in the pins. The flash goes into TTL mode unexpectedly. I've experienced this issue with mine, as well as randomly having it go into stroboscopic mode when rotated to portrait orientation. I'd like to buy another 580exII but I've hesitated, hoping Canon will fix this on newer builds.</p>

[chrisjb]

<p>The only time I`ve had probs similar was from a loose hotshoe (misswd contacts), this is noticable with verticle shots. mainly happens on 20d but 40 & 5d have been fine. Generally takes a minute or two to tighten the 4 screws, other than that if all contacts are clean I`d send to canon service :)</p>

[markonestudios]

I've had issues with 1) and also having the flash switch to TTL mode unexpectedly.