Understanding my flash

[Alison]

I'm having trouble understanding my flash.

Now I know there are different lighting conditions but I tried using my flash today and it wasn't going off. (Yes I had charged batteries in lol)
Played with my flash some more, well hubby did, and then the flash went off. I asked him how he did it and he said he hadn't changed anything

I feel, right now my flash is being unpredictable and I really want to understand it.

If I use my 50mm on auto (P mode) do I set my flash to ETTL and my zoom to 80mm to compensate for the 1.6 crop factor.

What if I use my 18-55mm kit lens. What then?



TIA

[gryphonslair99]

What Camera? What Flash? Need more info try and help you. Try reading this as well. It may help you.

http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/

[Alison]

Canon EOS 350D and 430EX speedlite

[gryphonslair99]

If I use my 50mm on auto (P mode) do I set my flash to ETTL and my zoom to 80mm to compensate for the 1.6 crop factor.

What if I use my 18-55mm kit lens. What then?



TIA

Alison,
Thanks, the info helps. If you are going to shoot in P mode with a 50MM, just set the flash to ETTL. Leave the zoom alone. You do not need to compensate for the crop factor. The flash and camera work together, the flash knows what lens you have on and what camera it is attached to. They will do the work together. If you use your kit lens the camera will even tell the flash what focal length you are using at the time and adjust for that. It will know if your zoom is at say 37mm or 55 mm.

Try shooting in Manuel mode, with a shutte speed of 200 and an apeture of f11. The flash will do all the work adjusting itself to the setting. It will also tell you when the photo can not be taken. Once you master that setting, you can play around with larger or smaller apetures for more control.

If you haven't taken the time to do so. Read the 430EX Manuel. It will explain a lot that the camera manuel does not.

[Alison]

I have tried reading the flash manual and it wasn't helping me. I needed it explained simply to me as you have done.
And providing me with that link helped me a great deal, thank you so much for that. I clicked on one of the FAQ links that I thought may concern me. I clicked on the right one.
Because within minutes of reading one paragraph I understood that I could use manual and the flash would do the rest, yay!

I love manual mode. In some cases I don't mind the auto modes but with toddlers running around a slow shutter in AV is no good. I much prefer setting my own ss and my own aperture.

[Alison]

One of my results. :thumbsup:

I was actually practising, using my 7 year old daughter as my model, when my baby girl stood in front of me and said "me!" She crossed her arms, smiled nicely and waited for me to take the shot. Bless her. She's only 19 months old.

There is no backdrop set up. She just happened to stand in front of my hubby's computer chair LOL.

Manual Mode
SS 1/125
F/5.6
ISO 400
Bounced flash
Slight adjustments to levels and colours in PS

[gryphonslair99]

Glad it helped. Nice shot of a pretty little lady.

[another view]

Looks like you got it all figured out! Pretty convenient about the background - the reason it's dark like that is because of the bounce flash not lighting what was behind your subject. Plus, I'm guessing there was a fair distance between her back and anything else. Nice shot!

[Alison]

Looks like you got it all figured out!

I don't know about that LOL
But I am much happier knowing that I can use my manual controls and have my flash do the rest.
I did find, however, that if I changed position in the room some of the images were over exposed, so, I pressed the "sel/set" button and adjusted it to -2/3 and it seemed to work. Did I do the right thing?

Please excuse my Christmas Tree box in the bg :blush2:
These two shots are sooc.

[another view]

I did find, however, that if I changed position in the room some of the images were over exposed, so, I pressed the "sel/set" button and adjusted it to -2/3 and it seemed to work. Did I do the right thing?

Yeah, you did the right thing! Flash can be difficult to understand, and trial and error is probably the best way to learn it. Understand the concepts, then put them to work and you'll see that it really isn't that difficult - but can be frustrating at times.