Got a new setup!!!!! I am stoked

Now I need to learn to use it.

I have a few of those boxes too

From here out you will be nickel and dimed on all the small extras...other lenses, tripod, camera bags, pocket wizards, battery grip, rechargeable batteries, filters, etc.

That's true for almost all cameras.....

That's funny, I pretty much the same boxes, except for the SB-600. I have the MB D10 instead.

There is so much more to learn about this camera too.

Those were my exact boxes a year ago. (Except I got a D80)

I'm starting to learn to really like my 18-200 now. Read a tip somewhere when shooting indoors put the aperture around f/5.6, ISO 800, and drag the shutter to 1/80. Bounce the flash of the walls or ceiling and the photo will suddenly "pop".

Congrats Rich.

Interesting setting on the ISO, AP, I've always heard keeping it at 400 is the ticket although I'm not sure why.

True. The lower the ISO the clearer the shot. But I have an older house and it is pretty dark. Most of my photos were the typical blown out subject (from the flash) with a dark background (from the light fallout) By increasing the ISO, I am able to control the flash better. Sometimes I do lower it to 640 in some parts of my house.

I think I got this tip from the wedding forum on FM. The photographers there are always complaining about the light in reception halls and churches and ISO 800 is the norm and even into ISO 1600 and beyond. Of course the problem with high ISO is grain. But Canon and Nikon do a pretty good job with that now, and 800 isn't that high.

Here is a snapshot I took of my son making cookies. I should say I adjust my aperture from f/4-8 for Depth of Field composition but the other settings remain constant. I control the exposure by adjusting the levels in my flash. I also have an Sto-fen Omni on my flash and always bounce it or tilted at a 45 degree angle

This is a f/6.3



I don't see much problem with grain here.

This is just straight out of the camera except for a slight adjustment on the white balance.

(Message edited by bigdad on January 03, 2008)

That's very nice for a flash shot. I certainly won't argue that ISO 800 is fine (with or without flash). I'm not much of a flash expert, that's why I was curious about using a higher ISO since in a perfect world where the flash did everything it is supposed to, using a higher ISO (which diminishes the need for illumination) wouldn't be necessary.

I will never claim I know more about photography then you Rich. All I know if I keep the ISO 400 or less indoors, the light meter wants me to set the shutter speed at 1/20 or slower. When I kick it up to 640 or 800, my photos finally get some light with a decent shutter speed. Using a flash is definitely an art I'm still trying to learn. But it has to be the single best improvement someone can make when they buy an DSLR.

I guarantee you know more about flash photography then me!

With the Canon flashes getting good exposure and no shadows is more of a black art then science. Finding a good combination of settings (including ISO) that works all the time is near impossible for me so I read your post with great interest. I'm going to experiment with some higher ISO's next time around, I've always left the ISO at 400 and fiddled with the FEC to try and limit the flash power so raising the ISO is another good way of doing that. Thanks for the tip!

I know some of may be interested in the ability of the D300 with indoor action shoot with 200-400mm VR lens, iso 2000
Here's a link
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1039&message=26514157

Just to clear up a little bit about flash. ISO at 800 isnt better than 400 or 200 or 100. when i use flash 90% of the time i have it at 100. the trick to flash is understanding that the exposure for everything lit by the flash is controlled by the aperature whereas the ambient light is controlled by the shutterspeed. so essentially when your lightmeter is telling you that the shutter needs to be 1/20 that is strickly talking about the ambeint light in your background. the lightmeter doesnt take into effect the flash when you are dialing it in. do a little experiment. set your flash to aperature auto mode. and your camera on manual. do it indoors with some light coming in from outside or with the lights on. keep your aperature the same and take shots starting at like 1/200 and work your way down to 1/15. make sure you have a subject in the forground that is being lit by the flash and make sure there is some fair separation between the subject and the background. essentially when you raise your ISO you are correcting for the ambeint exposure but your flash also says "okay he raised the ISO" and so he puts out less power to compensate.
i hope this helps with some flash understanding.

i forgot to mention what you will see in the experiment. as you lower the shutterspeed the background will become lighter and lighter while the subject that is lit by the flash will remain contast untill such a time as the shutter is open long enough to make the ambient light stronger than the flash in which case everythign will get blown out.

So the Nikon flashes have an "auto-aperture" mode where the flash actually controls the aperture or are you saying it bases the flash power strictly on the aperture you have set on the camera?

I understand your basic theory, which is that the flash supplies the light momentarily to account for underexposure at any setting but I'd like to know how an aperture based mode affects the picture.

It sounds like it may try to control the amount of flash on the subject vs the BG somehow based on the lens opening. My Canon flash doesn't have any such mode like that, that's why I'm curious how that works.

hmm i am not possitive about canon. because i never use one but... as far as nikon goes the AA(aperture auto) mode goes. the aperture you set on your camera talks to the flash and tells it to put out enough power to expose for a picture at that f/stop. the only real problems with this mode is that it does not account for distance between subject and flash. it is just an easy way to keep the flash output the same for the little experiment. you can accomplish the same thing on manual mode. the reason you dont want it on TTL mode is that the flash emits light and then the camera reads the light output and then relay's to the flash what output to emit. the problem is that there can quite offten be discrepencies between each shot and so for the sake of the experiment it could fiddle with your results a litle bit. it probably wont make a huge deal but it could. i personally allways try to use manual mode on my flash. TTL is just too inconsitant and does not allow you to control the light enough for my liking.

What Joshua is saying about the shutter speed and aperture controlling the exposure holds true for every type of flash in every flash system.

for example...the two exposures below will essentially appear the same during the day. But when you use a flash they'll change the image dramatically:

1/200th @f2.8- A shutter that isn't open for very many seconds requires that more light be let in per second to maintain the same exposure. So since you have more light being let in per second, a flash will be much brighter and the background will be much darker since it's not being exposed for very long.

1/10th @ f13- Since a slower shutter speed lets light in for a longer duration of time, it requires a smaller opening in the lens to maintain the same exposure. So when you pop off a flash it isn't going to appear as dramatic since the flash duration is a small fraction of a second and the lens isn't taking as much light in per second because it's taking it in for a longer amount of seconds. So you get more ambient light and less flash.

adding to what scott is saying. The flash duration is about 1/1000th of a second and for the most part remains at about that speed untill you get to really low power settings. so that being said the flash is essentially dictating its own shutter speed, and therefore the only way to control it's exposure is with the aperture. i hope that makes sense.

Both the Nikon and Canon TTL modes are kind of old technology now and don't take advantage of the flash metering matrices the newer flashes have. I'm not sure you really answered my question about exactly how this Nikon "auto aperture" mode works because it sounds by definition that it doesn't use all the settings you mentioned Scott (along with the focal length of the lens being used as well - which Canon flashes read) or perhaps it just puts bias on the aperture in order to place more flash emphasis on the BG rather then on any foreground subject.

Just speculating out loud above, I guess one would have to read the manual to really know how it differs from the other modes (unless you're saying the AA mode is directly controlling the shutter, which I didn't think was possible with a flash).

I do understand the relationship of flash power relative to shutter speed, aperture, ambient and desired exposure, I was just interested in how this Nikon mode you're having success with works as Canon doesn't have a mode like that (at least on my flash).

hmm well for starters the new flashes all use iTTL which basically accomidates the newer flash matricies and whatnot. it communicates with the camera and lens taking everything into account. auto aperture mode is like an semi-auto mode. basically you will imput the zoom of the flash head, ISO, and aperture settings youself. now the difference between this mode and manual is that it determines the flash output based off the info you gave it to correctly expose for the aperture you set in. if the picture needs minor tuning then you simply just raise or lower the aperture rating on the flash and it will put out a different amount of light. manual mode asks you to imput the power setting aswell as the other info. most new flashes like the sb-800 will have a guide number calculator built in which will assist with making the correct exposure when using manual mode.

okay so i did a few minutes of research and it appears that canon does not have an AA mode on thier flashes. weird to me. can i say, go nikon?? kidding. but it is kind of odd to me. if i were a canon user i would focus on learning how to use Manual mode.

check this out aswell. there is an awful lot of good info on this site. go through the lighting 101 thing they have.

www.strobist.com

hopefully this helps rich

Thanks JT, that was very informative. Even "died in the wool" Canon guys will tell you that the Nikon flash system is superior to Canon's. ETTL-2 is better though on the newer bodies that support it. Never used a Nikon so I'm assuming it's better because that's what I'm always reading.

My cam has an FEC (flash exposure compensation) mode which I use to tweak the flash's output (much like adjusting regular exposure via the EC setting), does the Nikon have that as well or is that basically what you're tweaking manually in the mode you discuss above?

The Nikon system does have an exposure compensation tool on the newer SLR bodies, well at least my D200 has one but when adjust the flash power in the manual settings it gives you control of 1/3 of a stop all the way through the power settings. its really quite good. one thing i will say about canon is who needs a flash when you can just crank he ISO up and not have to worry about noise. kidding obviously there are times for flash. anyway. if your flash supports it just learn to use manual mode. it will help you understand flash exposure sooo much more and in turn will make you much more creative using flash. eTTL has the ability to be a correct exposure but the problem is: A)the user 99% of the time has no idea what is going on "it just works" and b) your ability to control the way you want the light to look is limited.