tonyespofoto Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Back in the day (the Vivitar 283 day, that is) the circuits were quite simple and usually, a little time would reform the capacitor(s) and you would be back in business. My recent experience with Canon 550s now tells me that additional things can go wrong that can'be fixed by extended running. I had a 550EX that I had not used for a while. During its storage, something went bad. Yes, I could keep stuffing batteries into it and occasionally, it would flash, but it would not return to consistent operation. I sent it to Canon, but was told that it was too old to repair. They offered a 'loyal user' discount on a replacement flash which I took advantage of. Apparently, that was not an isolated problem. A second 550 soon exhibited the same symptoms. So I guess you have to just suck it up and cut your losses. That said, I have Vivitar 283s at least 2 decades older than the 550 that are still operational, including a couple of hot-rodded versions. It was common during the 80s and 90s, to use an external battery pack and put an additional capacitor in the the battery compartment. Voila!! You had a 283 with TWICE the factory power with all its automatic features intact and its reliability uncompromised. It was also possible to replace the flash tube and reflector with a bare tube flash, with or without the additional capacitor. Those were the days.
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