Canon 80D: cannot use flash anymore (built-in & external)

[Gico]

Hi,

big drama last night at my daughter's 18th birthday: both flash stopped working.

At the beginning everything was fine with my Canon 80D but then something happened. I gave the camera to another person for a while (but I suppose she did not change any setting). After that I could not use flash anymore: ext. flash started firing too much and pictures were almost white, built-in flash did not fire anymore.

Now, this is the situation:

Built-in flash doesn't fire anymore. Flash itself works as it flashes for focusing or red-eye reduction, but doesn't flash taking pictures. Pictures taken exif data show "flash: On/fired".

Extrnal flash (Yongnuo EX500 mounted on hot-shoe, E-TTL) fires but pictures are dark (like flash fires before or after the shot).

I'm testin using P program, checking again and again flash settings in camera and on ext. flash,  resetting flash settings from menu, resetting camera settings, changing batteries... nothing to do.

Any idea?

Thank you in advance

GC

[Waddizzle]

Welcome to the forums.

Sorry to hear about your experience. I am guessing that the onboard flash is able to pop open, but doesn’t flash.

If you switch your mode dial to Intelligent Auto, the green [A+] setting, does the onboard flash work when needed?

[normadel]

Are you shooting in Live View Mode? If you are, try not using Live View to see what happens.

[Gico]

No, no live view.

If I switch to A+ mode, as I half-press the shutter button the flash pops up, in the viewfinder I see the "lightning" icon, but when I take the picture, no flash at all. Info of taken pictures show as the flash fired.

I could get rid of the built-in flash but also the external does not work, in a different way. : (

[deebatman316]

Have you tried a Canon speedlite to see if it will work correctly. Older 3rd Party flashes can be incompatible with newer cameras. I would check and see if flash firing is enabled in the camera menu. The AF Assist Beam still fires if flash firing is set to disable. The built in flash is the AF Assist Beam by firing rapidly.

[shadowsports]

Greetings,

My only recommendation in addition to my colleagues would be to perform a full settings reset.  Main and Custom. Then retest.  

Granted the person you handed the camera to didn't likely change settings and shooting in Scene Intelligent Auto should allow the onboard flash to fire, but it won't hurt to try after a reset.

[Gico]

Hi, thank you all for help.

At the end I solved getting a new external flash, a Neewer NW700 on Amazon (used as new).

What happened... well, that time external flash Yongnuo started working bad, flashing out of time or firing too much (suppose 1/1). So I decided to took it off and use the built-in flash. But also the built-in flash didn't work properly, so I thought the problem was the camera flash management. Lately, testing the Yongnuo off camera, using pilot button, I noticed that it always fired at max power, even setting it at 1/64. So I realized that the Yongnuo was faulty by itself and got the new flash. I suspect that the buit-in flash was bad by a long time. I noticed strange behaviours in the past but I didn't care because I use it very rarely. Many times coincidences led to wrong conclusions. 

Note: updating the software changed the behaviour of the camera, but I'm going to open a new thread for it.