AUTOMATIC built-in pop-up flash and external flash problem

[Greg Beetham]

The only thing I can think of that you might try is, turn both the camera and flash on, (wait for the flash too charge up fully) and then slide the flash off and on the shoe a few times, even compose a shot as if you're going to take one including shutter button half press and all, and then instead slide the flash off and on a few times, I remember it worked with my A100 and F56 OK when they were briefly not talking to each other very well, (after one of my experiments).
Greg

[David Kilpatrick]

I suggest we go no further off topic on this one, your moderator here has two very inaccurate typing fingers and so do some posters

David

[srt101man]

ml

Some rechargeables, if you happen to hit a certain discharge rate they can seemingly go dead for a second, it shows up as a dead drop in voltage on a graphing meter (thats how I found it actually. no an analog meters how I found it, the graphing meter recorded it). I discovered this with NiCd' s a few years ago where a backup circuit was supposed to maintain memory on a module. every similar battery we tried exhibited the same thing. we solved it by going to diferent batteries of a smaller capacity then eventually to just regular alkalai batteries later when we eliminated the chargers.

I just thought maybe your camera forgot the flash was attached and started the built in.

I wonder. what kind of batteries are you using in the flash? are they rechargables by chance? I wonder if you tried it with plain disposables?

They are rechargables. Why would that make a difference in this situation? I do realize that each rechargable cell (4 of them in the flash) is usually ~1.2v rather than ~1.5 for each carbon non-rechargable cell. My problem happens with batteries with a full charge and rechargables in general discharge so that their voltages stay high almost until they are exhausted.

I am very curious as to where you're going with your line of questioning.

TIA.

I was wrong. Though I had purchased an additional 8 rechargable batteries and charged them, what is in the flash are lithiums that I had.

Thanks for the explanation regarding how rechargables might fool the camera. I guess the test is to set the camera to AUTO and turn off the external flash and see if the internal flash pops up.