SB 600 Speedlight Issue

[nathan.welch]

Hi all,.

A bit of a problem with my speedlight. Attached it to my D80, took some pictures, then the flash decided to start triggering every 10 seconds or so. Took it off the hot shoe, it continued firing. Switched it to manual, performed factory reset, took out batteries for 30 mins. It's still doing it.

Time for the menders, or a setting I've inadvertantly triggering?

Update: Seemed to work ok after reseating the batteries, but once connected, a couple of shots later and it starts to trigger itself again.

Any help would be gratefully received.

[ScottL]

Has the flash been in contact with water, high humidity, or condensation going from cold to warm? If not, try cleaning the contacts on both the flash and on the top of the camera.

If you do decide to try cleaning, use a pencil eraser, do not use liquid.

If you did the factory reset in the flash properly, it should erase any and all settings. With that said, I do not believe any of the Nikon Speed lights have the ability to self trigger at a set time frame.

Is the camera shooting every 10 seconds? If so, you may have accidently set the camera to take multiple exposures over a given period of time.

Please keep us updated.

[nathan.welch]

Thanks for the tips. It's definitely triggered by being attached to the camera. Though the camera is not shooting. I'll try the eraser tip...

[nathan.welch]

Cleaning seems to have fixed it. Thanks so much for the tip.

[ScottL]

No problem. It does not take much to cause little shorts between those contacts, especially that they are all on a single metal plate.

[xxrayna]

This same problem happened to me. It turned out that there was battery acid on the metal contacts. The sb600 actually has a history of this (Nikon denies this but google it and there are plenty of people out there with the same issue).

I've had 3 different sets of batteries "leak" in mine so far. I just let it dry out, then clean it with a damp q-tip, then I let it dry out again and it works for a while. I store my sb600 without the batteries now, even if it's just going to be a day or two.

good luck :(