Slow to take pictures with flash

Hey guys, i am new to the forum, but have had this problem for a while. When i have the flash on in automatic mode, i can take a pictures relatively fast, 1 every 2 seconds or less, and sometimes way slower like 1 every 10 seconds. But after about 10 pictures, it will start to give me problems. Say if i take a picture and it works(flash goes off), then i can't immediately got to the next one, it displays busy in the viewfinder for 3-5 seconds. But if i close the flash right away after taking the picture and re-open it, it will take the next picture instantly. This is really getting annoying when i am in a situation using the internal flash, am i doing something wrong?

What camera? Is the battery fully charged?

Haha, thanks for pointing that out. I feel pretty stupid now. It is an XTi, and the battery is fully charged. I expected that as slow as i take pictures with the flash on that it would not have trouble keeping up.

Hi & welcome to POTN

As I understand the E-TTL system the flash whether on board or external will only use as much power as it needs. Therefore there may be residual energy in the "firing circuitry" to allow such rapid repeat picture taking but you will eventually hit the point when the flash needs to recharge thus slowing down the the 'speed' of the picture taking.

I hope that makes sense and someone please correct me if I have gone off at a tangent???

I am not familiar with your camera, but my bet is it will turn out to be a heat sensor built in to prevent the flash from self destructing. I know some external flashes have that built in.

The capacitors need time to recharge. If you take too many shots in a short period of time they become drained and you need to give it time to recharge. It will give you that busy message. You're using the built-in flash I'm assuming?

Ya, i am using the built in flash. I figured it would only need about 2 to 3 seconds for the capacitors to build up again, but that was just a guess.

A flash can be thought about like a bucket of water. When it first is turned on, the supply hose has to fill the bucket and then stop when it is full. When you fire the flash, that is like opening a spigot at the bottom of the bucket. A certain amount of water (light) comes out and then stops when enough has been supplied. If the bucket was only partially drained, the hose tops it off with water and (you can fire almost immediately) and the spigot can immediately supply more water. But if the bucket was almost totally drained, the hose needs to run for a longer time to refill the bucket, and you have to wait until a longer period of time before you can open the spigot again (take another shot).

canonloader wrote in post #5279771
I am not familiar with your camera, but my bet is it will turn out to be a heat sensor built in to prevent the flash from self destructing. I know some external flashes have that built in.

Wilt wrote in post #5279826
A flash can be thought about like a bucket of water. When it first is turned on, the supply hose has to fill the bucket and then stop when it is full. When you fire the flash, that is like opening a spigot at the bottom of the bucket. A certain amount of water (light) comes out and then stops when enough has been supplied. If the bucket was only partially drained, the hose tops it off with water and (you can fire almost immediately) and the spigot can immediately supply more water. But if the bucket was almost totally drained, the hose needs to run for a longer time to refill the bucket, and you have to wait until a longer period of time before you can open the spigot again (take another shot).

I think Wilt has used a very good analogy & better describes what I was trying to say and combined with Canonloaders point about protective circuits may cover your experiences.

I have the same annoying problem with my XTi. I figure it must be thermal heat related, that you get less shots with flash the more you use it. It can be very annoying, and I have "Lost" many great captures due to this. I use the 430ex external flash and it will fire until the batteries die.