7D telling wrong focal length to 580 EX Mk 1

I have a 7D and a 580 EX Mk 1.

The camera is telling the flash the focal length that is not corrected by the crop factor, e.g. when the lens is at 50mm the camera tells the flash 50mm, not 80mm.

A bit of research reveals that there was at least one firmware upgrade for a Canon crop DSLR to correct this issue, for the 20D.

Am I overlooking something here or did Canon screw up?

Your flash is fine.
Canon implemented this "feature" in a bone-headed way.

If you listen to the zoom motor on the flash unit, you will hear it move as you zoom your lens from 24mm to 18mm, even though the flash display will still say 24mm.

On the other end, if you zoom your lens from 70mm to 105mm, the display will change but the flash head does nothing. That's because it's already maxed out at 70mm.

Automatically compensating for the crop factor is a good feature that actually works, despite what the flash display says. But sometimes I wonder what the people at Canon are smoking when they design these things.

Thanks so much, Curtis.

I think it's the line of thinking that doing anything in 35mm equivalents is somehow too confusing to the customer. (although some compact camera scenes now use 35mm equivalents)