Metz 48 AF-1 - Massive over exposure

Hi Everyone

Has anyone experienced this, sudden massive over exposure with a Metz 48 AF-1 ?

I haven't used the camera for a few weeks and today I suffered massive over exposure with the Metz.

The camera exposes correctly with flash off and with the internal flash. There is no flash exposure compensation set.

I have reset the Metz (press and hold "mode" button for 5 seconds - display shows reset).

Still over exposes massively. Before I assume a failure of the flash, could I have missed something or made some newbie error ?

TIA

Terry

I assume your are you using PTTL as opposed to setting flash manual. Try adjusting flash compensation on camera.

Can you post a shot as well as the shooting data - aperture, shutter speed, ISO. Also what auto exposure mode were you using (Av, Tv, Tav M etc)? This info should help us help

My metz 48 always over exposes particularly in pttl mode..

Gents,

Thanks for your responses - and sorry for the delay in acknowledging them
but I've been away on business.

I cured it with the normal answer to everything these days "have you tried turning it off and on again".

A little bit of thought told me that the problem was straightforward - the camera and flash weren't communicating properly. The camera thought the flash wasn't there so exposed for the ambient light - and the flash wasn't receiving any information from the camera so it fired at full power.

It was correctly mounted (or presumably it wouldn't have fired at all).

It took a couple of tries before it sorted itself out - it had failed during an event I was photographing (fortunately the K-30's high ISO performance means that I did get some usable images without flash)and was still playing up when I got home (during which time the flash had been removed and both switched off) - hence my post here.

A subsequent check of the exif data (which I should have checked first)showed that the camera thought that the flash had not fired.

A couple of on/off cycles later it just sorted itself out.

But I'll be watching out for it to do it again.

I think I'll update the camera firmware now "Improved stability for general performance" .!

sounds like it could be a dirty contacts problem, if the big chunky contact in the middle is connected then the flash will fire, so it's quite possible to have a good enough connection to fire the flash but for the digital contacts to be misaligned or dirty such that the camera-flash communication doesn't work.

I've seen this with my Sigma unit before.