6 months ago I bought a used 1n. Several times while using it with my flash (420 ez), the camera would all of a sudden not acknowledge a flash was on it. With some fanagling (sometimes lots!), I'd get the camera to finally acknowledge the flash and the pictures would turn out fine. But last Sat. night (after assignments Fri. night and Sat. morning which turned out great), the camera did it again. I fanagled again and got it to acknowledge. Thinking everything was fine, I took 2 rolls of pictures. All the indoor pictures were badly underexposed (the outside ones were fine). I took the camera to a Canon service center and left it to be diagnosed. THey said it went out of program during the flash mode by 2 stops and are reprogramming it. But couldn't answer why I was having problems with the camera not acknowledging the flash. The flash and connection checked out fine. Has anyone had that happen to them? Is this a problem that reprogramming will fix? Once a camera is reprogrammed, is it more likely to slip out again? Any suggestions or comment would be greatly appreciated! THanks, Sue

-- Sue LaBeaume (slabeaume@hotmail.com), June 01, 2000

Answers

I don't know about the programing for your 1N, but I have a thought on your 420EZ. The 430EZ and newer Speedlites have a locking pin in the foot that matches up to the locking pin hole on the shoe of newer EOS cameras (newer than the EOS 630). Your 1N has the hole, but your 420EZ doesn't have the pin. Without the locking pin, the flash foot sometimes doesn't get in far enough or stay in far enough to make contact with all 5 pins in the shoe. This could be why the camera doesn't recognize that the flash is mounted sometimes.

You could also try cleaning the contacts on the foot and shoe.

-- Jim Strutz (jimstrutz@juno.com), June 01, 2000.