580 EX II problems

hello, i was wondering if anyone could help me with my problem. I'm hoping that i'm being me as usual and there is some sort of obvious solution that i am overlooking cause i like to panic when expensive toys aren't acting right

So i picked up the camera for the first time in a long time this afternoon and started playing with my flash ( 580 Ex II ). i took a number of shots that were perfectly exposed. I put the camera down for a min to adjust subject, come back and the flash says TTL and not ETTL, completely blowing out my shot Somehow it fixed itself, and i kept shooting figuring it was a fluke. When it happened again i looked at the flash again it said TTL... the pilot light was on so i pressed it to see if the flash would fire, it didn't however it then switched back to ETTL.

Anyone have the same experiences?? Please forgive me if this was already covered in another post, i did a search and the only post i saw about issues with the 580EX II was to clean the contacts, witch i did with the same results

Thanks for your time
Mike

This is usually an electrical contact issue. Your camera went unused for so long it got rusty!

Try cleaning the hotshoe contacts on both the camera and the flash with a pencil eraser. Also make sure the hotshoe on the camera isn't loose.

maybe this is retaliation from my camera for neglecting it so long

I'll try cleaning and checking contacts, see if that works. Thanks Curtis

I've had the same problem, and found that the 580EX II flash is designed to fit only newer model cameras properly.(Mark III, 40D) The flash seems to have some play when connected to any other camera, which causes the flash to lose contact with the camera at times. I use a bracket, so my flash is connected by an off-shoe cord. I wound up having to buy the newly redesigned OC-E3 off-shoe cord, and the problem has miraculously gone away!