major malfunction

DoctorIt

We were out for a little hike yesterday and at one point I decided to try and use a little fill flash in the woods. This was the result:



That's exactly how my camera recorded it. At first I wondered if my LCD was busted, but scrolling through others photos disproved that pretty quickly. I realized my flash mode was incorrectly set to Commander as I had been doing some light tent photography with the SB800 as a remote earlier in the week. I set it back to normal TTL and all was well.

I have no idea how an incorrect flash mode would make the sensor record the above. Stange, for sure.

I got a mirror lockup error later in the hike too, first time ever for this body. I'm hoping my D70 isn't showing signs of its age.

Art Scott

wow...great solar-posterization....too bad it was a mistake.

Does te D70 have a solar or posterization feature on the body or menu controls?...if os it could have been a computer glich.

DoctorIt

Art Scott wrote:

wow...great solar-posterization....too bad it was a mistake.

Does te D70 have a solar or posterization feature on the body or menu controls?...if os it could have been a computer glich.

I know, right!? cool mistake!

Unless its better hidden than Jimmy Hoffa, the D70 doesn't do any fancy processing, it doesn't even have an in-camera black and white feature.

ziggy53

Odd stuff (the second link mentions "Commander/Remote" mode:

http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00H4j1&tag=
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1034&thread=14884154
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=14875250
http://www.nikonians.org/dcforum/DCForumID86/15857.html

You are (unfortunately) not alone,

ziggy53

DoctorIt

ziggy53 wrote:

You are (unfortunately) not alone,

ziggy53

somehow, I'm not surprised. As long as its intermittent freak occurence, I don't mind.

ziggy53

DoctorIt wrote:

somehow, I'm not surprised. As long as its intermittent freak occurence, I don't mind.

Erik,

If I understand how Commander mode works (no guarantees), the camera flash emits a burst of data, encoded as part of the pre-flash, and the remote/slaved flash(es) return a burst of data, which the camera interprets as part of the iTTL calculations.

When you use the camera in Commander mode without an external and remote flash, the camera never senses the return data, and that probably really messes with the logic of the iTTL programming.

As long as you remember to cancel the Commander mode, I doubt that you will see another anomaly like this. Otherwise, if you forget and use the camera in Commander mode, it may recur, and it is "operator error".

(There are plenty of occasions where "my" cameras are smarter than "their" operator.)

ziggy53

DoctorIt

ziggy53 wrote:

Erik,

If I understand how Commander mode works (no guarantees), the camera flash emits a burst of data, encoded as part of the pre-flash, and the remote/slaved flash(es) return a burst of data, which the camera interprets as part of the iTTL calculations.

When you use the camera in Commander mode without an external and remote flash, the camera never senses the return data, and that probably really messes with the logic of the iTTL programming.

As long as you remember to cancel the Commander mode, I doubt that you will see another anomaly like this.

Otherwise, if you forget and use the camera in Commander mode, it may recur, and it is "operator error".

you won't hurt my feelings if you call me a big dope