Minolta 600Si AF issue

[Paul Howell]

I have a 600SI that I bought at a yard sale for $5.00. Some of the cladding had come off, around the grip. I used epoxy to fill in the missing cladding and at some point plan on covering with leather or vinyl for a final finish. Other than the missing cladding it seemed to work just fine. But today I was shooting at the zoo, I wanted to use the onboard flash for fill in, when I popped the flash up the AF stopped working. Flash down AF works, flash up no AF. I have a couple of 800SI which I use the onboard flash without issue. From what I have read the the shutter metering and AF use the same chip set, although the 800 has a higher top shutter speed and a more powerful flash. Never run across this issue.

 

[xkaes]

I've seen a lot of pop-up flashes end-up a little "off-set". There might be a linkage that is not working correctly. Does you flash seem to be perfectly shut when it's closed? Do you hear it snap?

 

[Paul Howell]

It does, looking at the 600si and 800si, the infrared sensor is much larger on the 800, I think the 100 to 300 with lens hood might be blocking the sensor on the 600si, but not on the 800 or 9Xi or 9.

 

[Andreas Thaler]

I can only speculate.

The pop-up flash is probably integrated into the circuitry via a flexible printed circuit board.

Frequent opening and closing puts stress on the board, which could cause it to break. So, it's a contact problem.

You'd have to open the camera and take a look.

But as always, be careful of the flash capacitor, which carries dangerously high voltage.