Manual exposure + Standard TTL flash

[repeseda]

Hi,

There are those moments when you think you have everything in place to take the picture and as something changes your mind goes blank and you can't think. That just hapened to me this weekend.

I was almost ready to shoot a portrait of my family under a big low-profile tree. The reading was 1/20 @ F5.6 in manual mode for correct exposure. I though about using fill flash for the shot but I could not think what the effect would be when manually exposing the shot.

On this situation of manual exposure, what whould be the effect of using the builtin flash? (Standard TTL will fire according to the manual).
I have a Nikon N80.

Thanks in advance.

[another view]

Fill flash would have helped, especially in the shade. A lot of times I'll shoot manually with flash anyway just for that reason, and here the flash with anywhere from no compensation to -1 compensation. Another way to do it is to put the camera on "slow sync" so it will expose for the ambient. If you leave it in normal flash mode, it'll go to 1/60.

Of course at 1/20 even with flash you'd want to use a tripod.

[repeseda]

That's exactly what hapened. When I saw that the speed did not go to 1/60 (as it does when sooting in exposure modes other than manual) I got confused and decided to not use the flash.

However, how would slow-synch would work for manual exposure? If I set the speed and apperture manually, to me that's it, there will be no slow-synch whatsoever available (while on other modes the cammera will adjust speed to capture the backgroud). Am I correct on what I think? Sorry if I misunderstood your comment!

What I understand about flash is that, when shooting fully automatic and using flash, the cammera would fire the flash to achieve proper exposure (middle gray related) for the scene. Example, shooting a kid blowing the candles of the BD cake and the ambient light is off. The cammera will fire the flash to properly expose the kid.
I think I have a problem understanding how correct exposure relates to flash usage on situations other than fully automatic with no flash compensation.

Thanks.

[another view]

However, how would slow-synch would work for manual exposure?

It doesn't, only applies to Aperture Priority or Program. If you used normal sync in these two modes you wouldn't get a shutter speed below 1/60 with a flash on. If you switch to slow sync, then the camera can go below 1/60 - it's a good feature because at speeds slower than this you can get motion blur and unsharp backgrounds unless you pay very careful attention to the shutter speed on every shot (how many people do in the heat of the battle?!).

Manual and slow sync are kind of redundant - maybe I didn't explain it clearly above. Hope this helps...! Takes some experimenting, but TTL flash is very accurate (with film at least).