flash not firing reliably

[onomatopoeia]

I have an Elinchrom dlite 2 kit and one of the heads doesn't fire unless the power setting is fairly high (scale is 50 max down to 10 min and it needs to be at least 35 to actually fire, irrespective of trigger mechanism used). The other one fires on minimum power every time.

Any ideas what has failed / is failing before I look into repair or replacement?

 

[HoppyUK]

How are you firing it? Are you talking about via optical slave? If so, they can get flooded by too much ambient light - need to shield the sensor.

If it fires off the test button, there nothing wrong with the flash, just the triggering somewhere along the way.

 

[onomatopoeia]

The symptoms present irrespective of the trigger mechanism - test button, by firing another flash or wired to the port on the camera.