OddThinking

This is a Bad News/Good News story. I have mainly written it to help people who suffer the same problems with their flash gun.

Bad News: My flash photos were coming out badly on my digital SLR, even with an external flash-unit, bouncing the light off the ceiling.

Good News: Googling the problem found the reason. My legacy flash-gun supported TTL which worked well on my film camera, but not ETTL, which is required for the digital camera.

Bad News: New flash-guns are expensive.

Good News: I bought one anyway, late last year, while I was in the USA. (For Google’s sake, let me mention “Speedlite 430EX” here.)

Bad News: Last week it started playing up intermittently. I cuoldn’t work out why it worked fine sometimes, and did weird things other times.

Good News: I figured out when I held it horizontally, it worked. When I held it in portrait mode, left side up, it didn’t. When I held it right side up, it worked.

Bad News: It got flakier and flakier over time.

Good News: I found the cause – the foot of the flash, where it connects to the camera’s hot-shoe, had a crack in it.

Bad News: I thought I would have to replace the entire flash. I was most upset.

Good News: A fellow photographer explained that the foot is designed to be the weakest point, because it is easiest to replace. (I am not sure that is true, as opposed to merely poor design of hot-shoes, but easy-to-replace was exciting.)

Bad News: I wish I had found that out earlier, as I missed out on dozens of shots during an indoor event on a long weekend, because my flash had gone bye bye.

Good News: Yesterday, I was not far from a Canon Service Centre, so I popped in.

Bad News: When I asked for a quote, the woman behind the desk checked that they had the part, tapped on the calculator, and told me it was going to be $200.

Good News: She was playing a prank, and got me good. The real quote was $27 (AUD).

Bad News: She took ages to book in the flash unit for repair. I helped by filling in some of the forms myself, but she was having problems using the computer, and I got to stare at the walls for ages.

Good News: Before she finished booking in the unit, the repairer in the back room disassembled it, replaced the foot, re-assembled and tested it! It was ready to take away!

Bad News: That meant the woman needed to create an invoice; she asked me to take a seat while that happened, because it was going to take a while!

The experience took about 25 minutes all up, but I have my flash back!