Speedlite spazzing out

E

edbarton

Suspended / Banned
Messages
145
Edit My Images
No
I realise this is probably fairly easy to do, not particularly well phrased and easy to find but because I can't think of any way to define it other than the thread title, I'm finding it hard to connect this with anything in manuals, menus, online etc.

Sure it's a quick question and answer but humans are obviously a bit better than search engines for things like this.

Basically I have a 5d mark II and a 430 ex II and every so often it spazzes out and lights up for a second or two, presumably to light the scene so it can autofocus properly? This is very distracting in certain situations and I'd rather it not do this, especially as it seems fairly inconsistent in when it happens. Is there a custom function or something to turn it off.

Sorry spazzing out isn't really the best definition or most pc term but it's the best description of it I can think up. It's a continual series of flashes and associated noise for about a second.
 
IIRC when you press the DOF preview button with a flash attached it fires for 1 second so you can see where the light is falling, like a modelling lamp. Maybe you're inadvertently pressing it occasionally?
 
^
what he said, scared me half to death when it happened to me the first stime, there is a custom function to disable it as i dont use it at all.
 
Yeah, thats what I thought it would be. If you are doing this don't do it too often as the lamp overheats and the flash will auto shutdown for a good while to cool down.
 
The "spazzing out" is the camera firing a strobe effect to assist the AF in low light.
It is the custom function on your camera called:
AF assist beam firing
you can disable this feature.
 
AF on a flash does shoot a strobe, it emits a red cross hatched beam for the lens to focus on. Only the onboard should pulse to focus.
To the OP check the manual as it sounds like a button press is triggering the modeling lamp. Check your manual to see what other buttons it could triggered by.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top