sunpak flash problems

[mikehaugen]

I just bought a sunpak pz5000af for canon. I couldn't find a lot of reviews or opinions on it, but bought it anyway because I got it for $60 brand new and it has very similar specs as my 550ex. I am actually pretty impressed with it, it's built fairly well (though not as good as a canon of course), and it has some cool features like optical slave. It also has an auto mode that uses it's own sensor to measure and meter flash power.

Now the issue I have with it is that it doesn't communicate well with my 20d. If I attach it, it automatically sets the iso to 200- regardless of what the camera is set at and won't let me change it while it's attached, and it way over exposes in ttl mode. The aperture and zoom work like they should, and if I use it an auto- instead of ttl, it actually meters pretty accurately. If I mount it on my eos 3, the iso, zoom, and aperture set correctly. I haven't used it yet on the eos 3 because I don't know when I will get to a place to develop the film, but I am willing to bet that it would expose more accurately in ttl because everything else works better. Also the 550ex works fine on my 20d- at least it exposes correctly, I am not sure if iso is communicated or not because it doesn't display it on the 550ex.

So basically I can't narrow it down to a problem with the flash or the camera because one flash works with both cameras, one flash works with one camera but not the other. This isn't a huge deal because I really just bought it to use off-camera in manual, but thought that it would be nice if it worked with ttl to have a backup to my 550ex- and it just bothers me that it doesn't work properly.

Just wondering if anyone else has had a problem like this or could maybe think of why it would be.

 

[Big Mike]

Sounds like it's compatible with the 'old' E-TTL...not the newer E-TTL that Canon has been using for many years now. It's especially hard to tell/figure out with these off-brand flashes that pretty much had to reverse engineer how E-TTL works.

If you plan on using it off-camera, and you already have a 550EX, then I'd just say 'don't worry about it'.

 

[mikehaugen]

Thanks for the reply BigMIke, It's kinda what I figured. I also expected it in a way buying a sunpak, but as I said it was a great price and will do fine for what I primarily bought if for- ocf. I don't particularly like ttl anyway and am trying to get better at guessing with manual, but it sure is convenient if you want a quick shot.