Has anyone else out there experienced this problem with a DC240i? After some varying number of flashes (anywhere from 3 - 30), attempting to take a picture with the flash results in a "misfire" or a "sputter" and the flash doesn't really go off (it *very faintly* lights up) and the picture taken is darker than if you had attempted the picture without the flash at all. If you have red-eye reduction turned on the "pre-flash" fires just fine but then the real flash sputters. Doesn't matter if the unit is plugged in to AC or not and it has happened with multiple picture cards. This is a new camera; upon seeing it I ordered a replacement DC240i which has the same problem. A quick scan of rec.photo.digital turns up about 5 other people having the problem. Kodak has one of my 240i cameras (didn't send back the orginal one yet), but this is day 3, and to my knowledge they haven't even looked at it yet.

Any suggestions/comments?

Thanks, Ron D.

-- Ron DiNapoli (rd29@cornell.edu), January 06, 2000

Answers

Sounds like bad design to me...
A flash takes a certain amount of time to recycle. It has to charge a capacitor to a certain voltage before it can fire the flash tube. It sounds like it's conserving battery power by checking the voltage on the capacitor after each exposure to see if it needs to recycle. If the voltage is high enough then it won't bother. But - after 3 uses the voltage may test high enough under no-load, but once the red-eye reduction fires there isn't enough current left in the capacitor to do anything other than a slight firing of the xenon tube.
Does it do the same thing with red-eye reduction off?
Can you just wait a while before taking a 3rd picture?
- my guess is that if the camera is checking the capacitor voltage before deciding to recycle the flash then you are really stuck. You could wait 5 minutes or more for the capacitor to discharge naturally - but that's just plain obnoxious.
I'd take the camera back and buy another model if they don't fix it properly.
Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), January 08, 2000.

YES! I have this exact same problem with my camera. There's nothing I can tell you that you don't already know. I have learned to live with it, since most of my pictures are not indoors. It is not the "recycle time." I have had another problem; when you look through the camera, everything is blurry, and won't zoom. The camera itself will zoom, and take pictures fine, it's just that you can't look throught the hole in the camera. This problem happened when I took the camera to the top of a mountain in Park City Utah, and it was like 30 degrees outside. I am planning on buying a DC280, and putting the guts of that camera into the case of my Tangerine 240i. -Ryan

-- Ryan West Mifflin (riverhead19@hotmail.com), March 27, 2003.

I had that problem, the flash not operating or operating improperly, and 2 others. They were that the camera used batteries up before it filled the compactFlash card and the viewfinder slipped and couldn't be used and and so you couldn't take pictures. I sent the camera into the Kodak repair facility and to trouble shoot the problem. The cost for them to give an estimate is $35. If you get it repaired, that is the minimum repair price and it is rolled into the final bill. My price to get all 3 problems repaired was $195. The repair was worth it. The flash now flashes when needed and at the right intensity and doesn't fail. I can see out the viewfinder to take pictures. And I can fill a compactFlash card without changing batteries. I still have 2 sets of batteries since it takes over night to recharge them I just got back from 10 days in Spain/Canary Islands and never changed the batteries while taking 300+ pictures and even dropping the camera once. And I purchased a Radio Shack Ni- Cad/Ni-Mh Battery Charger that discharges the batteries before recharging them, something the recharger that came with the camera didn't do, leading to not being able to recharge batteries that wouldn't operate the camera but were not depleted.

-- Eric Tinnes (etinnes@surfbest.net), July 30, 2003.