580EXII AF Assist beam without Firing Flash

apersson850 wrote in post #15736944
Of course it can, and so can the 5D Mark II. Curtis was looking among the custom functions for this, but more and more flash related functions have moved into the flash control menu, something which started with the 1D Mark III, and has become more elaborate since then.

So the setting for disabling the flash, but keeping the AF assist beam, is under the flash control menu. Controlling the AF assist beam itself may still be in a custom function in the 5D Mark II, though.

Correct, 5D Mk II Flash Firing "enable/disable" is the last item in the camera flash menu and you have to scroll down below "Wireless Set" to see it.

The 580EX II AF-assist beam firing "enabled/disabled" is C.Fn 8 in the flash Custom Function menu

Thanks for confirming. I was puzzled as to why a 5DII wouldn't have an option that the crop cameras had. The best I could do was check the pdf manual, but it didn't mention Flash Firing except in that footnote. I thought it might be further down the menu from that screenshot, but saw it was the first option on my 7D, so I thought perhaps they left it out for some crazy reason.

Michelle Brooks Photography wrote in post #15728873
Hey guys; I've read that it's possible to set my 5dMKII camera settings so that my 580EXII when on camera will not fire the flash but still use the AF Assist beam; my question is, if I have a Pockey Wizard on my camera to fire OCF, will THAT still work? Seems like it would but I don't want to find out the hard way it won't. Thanks!

If you disable the flash, then the PC port will also be disabled so you won't be able to trigger a remote flash with a PW plugged into the PC port.

BTW, the setup should be easy enough to test if you already have the 580EX II and the PW unit so that you won't need to fid out the "hard way".