this was weird

[jgs001]

I was trying to shoot my shot for my 52 yesterday, and encountered something very weird. I've got a pair of jessops flashs, 300 and 360AFD. I have others, but they are all from the manual days, and won't be going anywhere in direct contact with the camera (well electrically anyway )..

Anyway... I ended up with a 6 second exposure, with a plan for 2nd curtain for freezing the motion, giving some motion blur as well. All good thinks I, till I pressed the shutter button, at which point the flash started (not sure it's the correct term but..) strobing. A series of short flash pulses. I thought at first my flash might be damaged, but switching the to 300 I got the same thing. I didn't get this effect with exposures either side of 6 seconds either.

Anyone have a clue what might be going on here ?

 

[tiler65]

is this not the pre flash to determine exposure?

 

[jgs001]

No... it wasn't a single flash, as normally happens, it was a pulse, one a second

 

[stoneblower]

I aren't well versed in the canon system but could it have been for autofocus assist?

 

[jgs001]

The popup does that, but the external flashes have a red light emitter that is used for AF assist.

 

[AndWhyNot]

Sounds to me like modelling flash.

Don't know why it'd be in that mode (I'm Nikon bodies & flashes) but that's where I'd start looking for a resolution - search the manual or online?

 

[david1701]

if its one a second, maybe the flash thinks the camera is shooting a lot instead of a lone exposure

for 6 secs you can trigger it manually

 

[jgs001]

Andrew, that sounds like it might be it, the 450d apparently can do modeling flash, but I can't find a reference to how to turn it on. The other option might be operating in stroboscopic mode, but I can find even less info on that mode. I've no clue if the jessops flash have the ability to work in these modes though... although it was doing something.