I am considering purchasing a CP-E4 battery pack to use with a 580EX-II flash. Is this Plug and Shoot or are there settings that have to be changed? Are these changed in the camera or on the flash?
There's nothing to change... It's ready to go when it's plugged in. There is one optional custom function that can be set in the flash to allow the internal batteries to assist in recycling or just power the flash only.
Plug & shoot. It even goes to sleep & wakes up with the flash once you half press the shutter button to wake the camera. Recycle times are much faster.
Unless you need to take a number of flashes in rapid succession, I wouldn't bother with the battery pack. I do have the CP-E4 with me at all times when I'm shooting but, 95% of the time, with high-powered re-chargeable batteries in the 580, I don't bother to plug in the CP-E4 because it's not needed.
The cp-e4 is awesome for wedding receptions and the like, but there is one setting that you might consider changing. I don't remember the custom function, but I set the 580 to use only the cpe4 batts when it is plugged in. This saves the flashes' internal batts for keeping it alive. I actually had an issue one time where the flash batts were dead even though the cpe4 had power, so the flash was useless. Unfortunately it happened during the cake cutting :-(.
Doing it the other way, you can just unplug the cpe4 when it dies
timbop wrote:
The cp-e4 is awesome for wedding receptions and the like, but there is one setting that you might consider changing. I don't remember the custom function, but I set the 580 to use only the cpe4 batts when it is plugged in. This saves the flashes' internal batts for keeping it alive. I actually had an issue one time where the flash batts were dead even though the cpe4 had power, so the flash was useless. Unfortunately it happened during the cake cutting :-(.
Doing it the other way, you can just unplug the cpe4 when it dies
+1
Set custom function 12 to 1 and it will behave as described.
timbop wrote:
I set the 580 to use only the cpe4 batts when it is plugged in. This saves the flashes' internal batts for keeping it alive. I actually had an issue one time where the flash batts were dead even though the cpe4 had power, so the flash was useless.
I set the 580 to use BOTH the CP-E4 AND the flash's batteries, mainly because I heard recycle times are the fastest this way. And I personally have never had the flash's batteries go dead but I don't take a whole lot of flash pictures. And I use high-capacity NiMH batteries which give much longer time of usage than alkalines.
timbop wrote:
The cp-e4 is awesome for wedding receptions and the like, but there is one setting that you might consider changing. I don't remember the custom function, but I set the 580 to use only the cpe4 batts when it is plugged in. This saves the flashes' internal batts for keeping it alive. I actually had an issue one time where the flash batts were dead even though the cpe4 had power, so the flash was useless. Unfortunately it happened during the cake cutting :-(.
Doing it the other way, you can just unplug the cpe4 when it dies
Excellent tip, Tim! That could save somebody's bacon...
D. Diggler wrote:
I set the 580 to use BOTH the CP-E4 AND the flash's batteries, mainly because I heard recycle times are the fastest this way. And I personally have never had the flash's batteries go dead but I don't take a whole lot of flash pictures. And I use high-capacity NiMH batteries which give much longer time of usage than alkalines.
That was with eneloops, after a full day's shooting (getting ready, church, formals, reception).
The 550 doesn't have that custom power setting. Put one dummy AA battery in the flash and it then gets all it's power from the pack. That greatly helps recycle times, also. http://tinyurl.com/7tgn4y8
