Why won’t my Canon 580EX wake up or follow lens zoom on a Canon 6D?
Asked 11/1/2013
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My Canon 580EX normally works fine on a Canon 6D, but during a shoot it kept seeming to turn itself off. When it was on, it fired normally, but after it shut down I could only get it working again by switching it off and back on. I also noticed the flash head was no longer zooming to match the lens.
Recycle time still seemed normal, and the batteries had been changed recently. Could this be a battery issue, or is there another likely cause?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
12y ago
2 Answers
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The problem seems to have been a bad connection between the flash and the camera. Canon Speedlites have an automatic power off feature that puts the flash to sleep after a short period. Normally, half-pressing the shutter button wakes up the flash, so you may not even realize that it was off, so I was surprised when I couldn't get the flash to wake up.
In my case, there must have been some dirt preventing one or more of the pins in the foot from making contact with the hot shoe, and this caused the wake up and zoom functions to fail. Removing the flash, wiping the foot and the shoe with a clean cloth, and reattaching the flash sees to have completely lifted the curse.
For what it's worth, you can disable the auto shutoff if you like. It's custom function 14 on the 580EX, and custom function 1 on most other models.
Originally by user4262. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user4262
12y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
This is most likely not a battery problem. The 580EX has an auto power-off/sleep feature, and normally a half-press of the shutter wakes it through the hot shoe contacts. If the flash won’t wake up and the zoom head also stops tracking the lens, that points to poor communication between flash and camera.
The most likely cause is a dirty or imperfect connection at the flash foot or camera hot shoe. Remove the flash, clean the foot contacts and hot shoe carefully with a clean dry cloth, then remount it securely. If the contacts are making proper connection again, both wake-up and zoom sync should return.
You can also disable the flash’s auto shutoff if desired using the 580EX custom function for auto power off, but if the flash previously worked normally, cleaning and reseating the flash is the first thing to try.
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