Problem: 10D & studio strobes not mixing

Well there I am about to take some studio shots at the local police dept. and my 30D doesn't work right. My mistake, I had the camera set wrong, but thats beside the point. Instead of trying to figure it out right then I decide to go to my back up 10D. I hook the sync cord up to the 10D body and the studio strobes start flashing uncontrollably and for no rhyme or reason. Any one have any clues what I did wrong or whats wrong with the body to make it do this?Thanks for the help.

Yup,

My first guess is one of three issues, the polairty of the sync cord and or the sync voltage is two high. Just turn the sync cord the other way and see if it stops. If not then it may be a grounding issue. If you are using old strobes then the sync voltage may be too high for the camera and short out your camera.

***** ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOUR STROBES ARE PROPERLY GROUNDED*****

I hope this helps, please be careful. Others may have other ideas too

Les

LBaldwin wrote in post #3694877
Yup,

My first guess is one of three issues, the polairty of the sync cord and or the sync voltage is two high. Just turn the sync cord the other way and see if it stops. If not then it may be a grounding issue. If you are using old strobes then the sync voltage may be too high for the camera and short out your camera.

***** ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOUR STROBES ARE PROPERLY GROUNDED*****

I hope this helps, please be careful. Others may have other ideas too

Les

I assumed the polairty of the 30 and 10 would be the same. Do you by chance know for sure. I purchased the 10D used and didn't get a manual with it. Not sure that would even tell me the polairty of the sync socket. The strobe hooked up to the body was a JTL that is 5 or so years old. I do have two Li-Shuai's (I think they are JTL knockoffs) that are basically brand new and will try to hook one of those up. Not sure what you mean about turning the cord around. The cord has the small socket type end for the camera and a large headphone type plug on the other so they won't reverse. Thanks for the ideas, I will try some of these things to see if I can figure this out. I am trying to sell this body to a friend of mine and would like to figure this out before selling it. I told him I would look into it. I doubt he will use studio strobes but would like it in proper order before the sale.

On the 10D the plus is the centre and the outer is minus... I don't know what it is on the 30D or your studio flashes, but the 20D has no polarity so can be used with any sync cord, so I presume this is your problem...

10D has the 6V trigger voltage limit. If these were studio strobes they easily could have exceeded this. I don't know if that would cause arcing across the sync switch in the camera or not, but if it did, that would explain things. Take a voltmeter to the terminals on your flashes and see what the trigger voltage is.

Have you tried it with a hotshoe adapter? When i took my 10D into my college studio i had problems with the flash heads when plugging straight into the camera, 10D behaved itself going through the hotshoe,.Just an idea to try

regards scott

sctuk99 wrote in post #3698974
Have you tried it with a hotshoe adapter? When i took my 10D into my college studio i had problems with the flash heads when plugging straight into the camera, 10D behaved itself going through the hotshoe,.Just an idea to try

regards scott

Yea I did think about using wireless through the hotshoe or the Wein safesync system. Honestly if its normal, per se, then I will just sell it to my buddy with the provision that if he uses it for studio work he will have to fix this problem himself. I am giving it to him for a heck of a deal so I am only looking into it as I am on this forum and he is not. I will try and change that in the future. I am trying to get him going with a DSLR as now he only has P&S. Thanks for the help and info. If anyone else has more I would still appreciate the responses.