Last week when I was at one of the tracks shooting, a buch of us were standing around talking during a very long break in the action. One of the shooters mentioned that he doesn't ever get any flash reflection off the cars using his Metz because there was some sort of setting that he could use that just eliminated that possibility.

3 of us who always hang together were discussing his claim yesterday and none of us had ever heard of this before (although none of the 3 of us would consider ourselves any kind of flash 'expert').

Does anyone know of such a setting that Metz would have? Or was this guy just giving us a line of bs?

The only way I know is to use the flash in manual, lowering the flash as needed until you get the desired results. I was the onlyone who could get one car to come out right, it was black with highly reflective decals and the numbers and lettering would just look like white blobs. Once I got the right setting I had everyone else trying to figure out what setting I was using on the camera and flash. One guy went so far as to try and get me to send a photo with the Exif data....fooled him, the file had no Exif :)
Anyway, manually lower the flash output until you don't get the overexposure.

As for the Metz, I never heard about it and know a number of "users" who all have issues with reflective decals. The 580 EX when used on Type A (pro) bodies is supposed to be able to deal with this issue but I haven't tried it yet.

JS

The 580 EX when used on Type A (pro) bodies is supposed to be able to deal with this issue but I haven't tried it yet.
In what mode ?
I'm at the 24 hours of Zolder and there are bound to be cars like that !
I'll report back with results ...
Certainly on the 20D it would over-expose and I had to go to manual mode.

In what mode ?
I'm at the 24 hours of Zolder and there are bound to be cars like that !
I'll report back with results ...
Certainly on the 20D it would over-expose and I had to go to manual mode.

I think the 20D is still a type B body. The 5D, 1D series and if I heard right the 30D sre "A" bodies but don't quote me on the 30D.
I'll look it up but the answer is in the 580EX manual :)

JS

OK, it's not in there, but it may be here: http://www.photoworkshop.com/canon/index.html I couldn't get it to work but my computers acting up.

You might try the modeling flash to give the flash a starting point in ETTL II mode. There are a couple places on the internet that explain the way the 580EX deals with the reflections and one of them lists the bodies capable of using the feature. If I find more I'll post it.

JS

OK, from B&H I found the following:

When combined with a compatible Canon camera (EOS-1D/s Mark II, D-20, Elan 7N/E) and compatible lens, E-TTL II utilizes subject distance and other information that automatically modifies flash power, resulting in accurate flash exposure regardless of subject size, reflectance, or photographic composition.

So it's dependant not only on what body but also the lens....but they don't list the specific lens(es).

Check out the following as it has a lot of info on the reflective & ETTL II under the ETTL II Technology. It wouldn't hurt to go through the entire Flash Works site as you can learn alot about all of the Canon flashes and so on.

http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/flashwork/ettl2/technology/index.html

JS