To all the excellent problem solvers on this forum, I'm looking for a little insight on why my old Canon 380EX flash has failed. I was shooting a friend's wedding this past weekend and after switching my 380EX flash from a 20D used outdoors for a fill flash (in which it was working fine from the images I have), I moved it to a 1D III and all the images started to come out dark.


After checking flash exposure compensation and general flash settings on the 1D III, the images were still super dark. I proceeded to move the flash to my 5D II and back to the 20D and got the same results. Luckily I had a 580EX II as my primary flash anyway, so I didn't miss any shots but when I got home, I still couldn't get it to work.


What's odd is that the flash still zooms in/out, fires test flashes fine, and fires with the shutter release but the resulting images are completely dark. Even if the flash were somehow out of sync with the cameras, shouldn't the default camera settings allow for blurred, but at least brighter images?


Anyone have any ideas? I'm probably going to toss the flash anyway and pick up at least a 430EX II or another 580EX II but would still like an answer for the failure...Thanks!