I ran across a post on another list yesterday where an OM-1 owner was
complaining of having sent his camera to "Garry's Camera Repair" for a
CLA. The CLA was cheap (less than $50 I think) but he was expecting a
flash problem to be solved that wasn't. He says the camera will not
fire a low voltage flash. I told him to send it to John and gave him
the link.
I'd never heard of this and decided to check my own OM-1. I tried it
with my Canon 540EZ which (at about 4 volts) I think is the lowest
trigger voltage unit I own. Much to my surprise my OM-1 will fire a
T-32 (about 12 volts) with no problem but won't fire the Canon flash
from either the hot shoe or the PC connection. So I took out another
OM-1 and got the same result. Then I tried it on an OM-2n, an OM-PC,
and an OM-10 all of which fire both the T-32 and Canon 540EZ with no
trouble.
I started digging around in my OM email archives and discovered a mail
from Clint Rumbo in 2005 who was responding to someone here about his
own OM-1 which had severe problems with flash. It almost never worked
with whatever flash he was using. Clint told him various thing to check
the connection of the hot shoe but also went on to discuss a dirty sync
switch as introducing resistance... put the camera on B, hold the
shutter button down and measure the resistance at the two flash
connections. He said it should be close to zero and it would be trouble
if it was measured in the tens of ohms. I tried my own camera and came
up with about 5 ohms using a simple analog meter. But is was
fluctuating a bit so I tried my digital meter. That was a surprise. It
was jumping all over the place from 0 to as high as about 300 ohms but
more typically under 50.
So, is a dirty sync switch the problem here?
Dr. (no low voltage) Flash
On 6/6/2012 6:48 AM, John Hermanson wrote:
> Make sure battery springs inside aren't squished down. Pull up with
> hook if necessary.
>
> ___________________________________
> John Hermanson | CPS, Inc.
> 21 South Ln., Huntington NY 11743
> 631-424-2121 | www.zuiko.com
> Olympus OM Service since 1977
> Gallery: www.zuiko.com/album/index.html
>
> On 6/5/2012 10:20 AM, NSURIT@xxxxxxx wrote:
>> I just loaded new batteries in my XA and A 16 flash and the flash doesn't
>> want to work. Never had any problems with battery leakage, etc. Any ideas
>> as to what might be wrong and/or possible fixes. Bill Barber
>
--
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