Why can't my Speedlite do rapid flash?

[microbike]

Just got back from a PR shoot, and the guy from the press had a regular Nikon thingy, with a normal looking Nikon flash. Thing is, when he went to take his shots of the opening of the store, his flash and camera just went bang-bang-bang-bang, I was stunned! My Canon 5D certainly can shoot at that speed, but my Speedlite with 2500mAh rechargeables can only cope with firing every fourth frame. What am I doing wrong?

It is a Canon Speedlite 550EX.

 

[tiler65]

I have a 580exII and if I put it on strobe it does exactly that. There is a speed setting so you can adjust the intervals of flash.

 

[oldgit]

It should bang away like an outhouse door after a dodgey chicken vindaloo.

It depends on:
A) How strong a flash its firing. If its 100% then recharge is going to be a long time
B) The strength of the batteries
C) The camera settings. If you've got it on Tv and its set to 1/10th then thats what it'll do.
Or if it's on Av and f10 and the metering says 1/20th then...

 

[sportysnaps]

I have two 550ex's - you can make the recycle quite fast by using an external battery pack - canon do two - the newer one takes an additional 4 batteries but the older (and better imho) takes 6 CP – E2/3 so you are now powering your flash with 10 batteries instead of 4 and recycle times are much faster.

If you keep doing really fast flashes then the flashgun may burn out (canon say no more then 20 flashes) I have a Metz flashgun and quantum turbo battery pack to get around these problems and it will do 8 frames/flashes a second for 30-40 flashes without problem (see my other post)