Flash & Fill Flash - serious help needed.

saltydog

Hi Dgrinners,

I am almost exclusively an "available light" shooter and hate on-camera flash in particular, so even after all these years I feel like a complete newbie when it comes to flash. This afternoon I tried to shoot something where I could have used some fill flash. Unfortunately I cannot find my manual (I am using a Nikon D70) and the flash settings are a mystery to me. Here are some of my many questions:

1) I don't have any setting on my camera that is called "fill flash" per se. I do have something where I can reduce flash output to 1/2, 1/4 etc. Is that what is commonly meant by fill flash?

2) I shot in aperture priority and reduced flash output by 1/2 with absolutely no visible effect or discernable difference (the object I was shooting was about 5 feet away). It seemed that my camera simply compensated by a longer shutter speed, unfortunately I cannot confirm this because I deleted the shots from my card and didn't pay attention at the time.

3) Only when I set everything to fully manually and stopped down the aperture by one stop did I finally see an effect - now the image was simply completely underexposed in the background and the foreground had ugly noticeable flash lighting in it. What I am trying to accomplish is a rather subtle brightening of a shadowy area. What am I doing wrong?

4) Can anybody explain to me what the flash mode "rear curtain" (or/and rear curtain sync") means and when I would use it?

5) How do I take shots like some I have seen in a magazine article about fill flash: Two people in the foreground are well exposed, flash is not noticeable. The rather dim evening background also shows lots of detail because, so the author of the article, he manually set his shutter speed for a longer exposure than the flash. I have tried this with the result that a: the people were very blurry, or b: the people were overexposed. What am I missing here?

As I said, all these question pertain to a Nikon D70 in-camera flash. Hope somebody can "enlighten" me . Thanks,

Jana

Art Scott

Ok you're using a D70.....but what flash are we talking about?

Not the totally useless popup trash flash are we?
Good fill flash can only be accomplished with an off camera strobe....even if that strobe is a nikon speed light.
....that thinngy that pops up where a SOLID hot shoe used to be is useless to me.....I have never gotten even one decent photo with that piece of junk.........BUT

I have used flash outdoors many times for portraits and weddings, in the film days.
Does the D70 have a high sync shutter that can be turned on? [may not be the correct terminology.]

jfriend

saltydog wrote:

Hi Dgrinners,

I am almost exclusively an "available light" shooter and hate on-camera flash in particular, so even after all these years I feel like a complete newbie when it comes to flash. This afternoon I tried to shoot something where I could have used some fill flash. Unfortunately I cannot find my manual (I am using a Nikon D70) and the flash settings are a mystery to me. Here are some of my many questions:

1) I don't have any setting on my camera that is called "fill flash" per se. I do have something where I can reduce flash output to 1/2, 1/4 etc. Is that what is commonly meant by fill flash?

2) I shot in aperture priority and reduced flash output by 1/2 with absolutely no visible effect or discernable difference (the object I was shooting was about 5 feet away). It seemed that my camera simply compensated by a longer shutter speed, unfortunately I cannot confirm this because I deleted the shots from my card and didn't pay attention at the time.

3) Only when I set everything to fully manually and stopped down the aperture by one stop did I finally see an effect - now the image was simply completely underexposed in the background and the foreground had ugly noticeable flash lighting in it. What I am trying to accomplish is a rather subtle brightening of a shadowy area. What am I doing wrong?

4) Can anybody explain to me what the flash mode "rear curtain" (or/and rear curtain sync") means and when I would use it?

5) How do I take shots like some I have seen in a magazine article about fill flash: Two people in the foreground are well exposed, flash is not noticeable. The rather dim evening background also shows lots of detail because, so the author of the article, he manually set his shutter speed for a longer exposure than the flash. I have tried this with the result that a: the people were very blurry, or b: the people were overexposed. What am I missing here?

As I said, all these question pertain to a Nikon D70 in-camera flash. Hope somebody can "enlighten" me . Thanks,

Jana

If you're talking about a Nikon flash unit on a D70, then you want to set the flash to TTL-BL mode and your metering mode to either matrix or center weighted (though matrix is probably better). This tells your system that you want to only use flash to fill in shadows and that the main camera exposure is still supposed to be used to properly expose the background.

You can Google your flash and certainly find lots of articles on how to use it.

The idea for fill flash is that you have two exposures to set. The camera ISO, aperture and shutter speed determine how all the parts of the image that are not lit by the flash are exposed. This will include the background. You can modify this background exposure in one of your cameras automatic exposure modes with the EV setting on the camera.

Then, the camera and flash unit will vary the power of the flash to "fill" in the shadows on your main subject. The flash will use the aperture and subject distance information from the camera to determine how much flash power should be required. Remember, the shutter speed has no impact on the flash power at all, except that it has to be less than the max flash sync speed (which is 1/500th on the D70). This is all automatic, there are no other settings required in the Nikon CLS flash design.

You can tweak the amount of flash power by setting flash EV on the flash unit. For fill flash where you don't want the flash to be noticable at all and your primary subject is lit similarly to your background (e.g. not in the shadows with a bright background), I usually set -2/3 EV on the flash unit, but you can experiment in your particular shot and just look at the LCD. If it's a single important shot, I often bracket the flash exposure (take 3-4 shots all at different flash settings) and see which one I like best later.

This is a fill flash shot with SB-800 and D70 (Zion Natl Park). As you can see, it was a bright a sunny day and without the fill flash there would have been some serious shadows on people's faces.




The other thing to watch out for is you have to stay within the limitations of your flash. If your subject is too far away and/or your aperture too small, then you can end up without enough power in the flash to really make a difference. You hit this limit quickly with the pop-up flash, not so quickly with the larger flashes. You can get more range for the flash with either a larger aperture or by raising your ISO or both.

saltydog

Art Scott - yes, I was talking about "the totally useless popup trash flash" that's built into the camera. I don't own an external flash unit (yet) because I so rarely take any pictures with flash at all...

Jfriend - thanks, your picture illustrates exactly what I was trying to accomplish. I guess the built-in flash just isn't cut out to perform like that...

If the subjects comes up more frequently in the future, I'll think about buying a flash unit. How much does a halfway decent one cost?

Greetings,
J.

MrBook2

I was just poking around in the menus on my D70, and I don't think it can do high speed sync with the built in flash. (or FP sync I think it might be called sometimes.) That is the easiest way to get the look you are going for.

As an aside, are you spot metering or matrix metering?

As for a good external flash, I suggest you look at the Nikon SB-600. It is under $200 new from someplace like B&H Photo. It is a good solid flash and does what Nikon calls "Balanced Fill Flash" which I think is what you are looking for. The D70 can also act as a "commander" flash so you can trigger the SB-600 without it being on the camera itself wirelessly by using some pre-flashes from the pop up flash. This isn't as flexible a system as say the D200 or D300 controlling that flash, but it still works ok. (The more advanced bodies let you control multiple groups of Nikon speedlights and allow you crank down or turn off the built in flash when it comes time to take the picture. The SB-800 adds this more advanced control of other lights and is slightly more powerful, but is more expensive.) Feel free to ignore all of that and simply take away that the SB-600 does fill flash.

As for rear curtain sync (I don't think anyone answered this yet, but I am typing pretty slowly this morning), this is used if you are doing a long exposure with a flash. Let's say you are in low light and want to get a bit of motion blur on your subjects as well as a sharp image from the flash. If you use normal flash sync, it will fire the flash at the beginning of the shot, so you get a sharp image followed by a blur. Imagine a person walking across the frame from left to right. The flash pops, giving you a clear image of the person on the left, but the shutter stays open giving you a ghost of them moving to the right. With rear curtain sync, the flash fires at the end of the exposure. So the same person has a ghost image of them moving across the frame from the left and a clear image of them at the end, near the right side of the frame. (You can see this effect used quite a bit in a lot of National Geographic articles in my opinion.)
See the two pictures here and it should be clear what this all means: http://www.nikondigitutor.com/eng/d70/select.php?menu=1⊂=b11&num=4

Hope that helps, at least a little.

--Aaron

jfriend

saltydog wrote:

Art Scott - yes, I was talking about "the totally useless popup trash flash" that's built into the camera. I don't own an external flash unit (yet) because I so rarely take any pictures with flash at all...

Jfriend - thanks, your picture illustrates exactly what I was trying to accomplish. I guess the built-in flash just isn't cut out to perform like that...

If the subjects comes up more frequently in the future, I'll think about buying a flash unit. How much does a halfway decent one cost?

Greetings,
J.

The pop-up flash on the Nikon D70 has a guide number of 56ft at ISO 200. Since GN = distance x f-number, that means you get the following distances out of the flash:

f/2.8 = 20ft
f/4 = 14ft
f/5.6 = 10ft
f/8 = 7 ft
f/11 = 5 ft

So, it works OK if you use a large aperture. You can also raise your ISO to extend the range. Where it doesn't work at all is if you want good depth of field (e.g. a small aperture) and fill flash at a distance. Then, you just need more flash power. The pop-up flash can also be obscured by some of the larger lenses when your subject is close.

For reference, the SB-600 has a guide number of 138ft at ISO 200 and the SB-800 varies from 175ft to 257ft at ISO 200 (depending upon how the flash head is zoomed). As you can see, these flashes have a lot more power.

Art Scott

I know this sounds like a lot of money for thing you don't think you will use often.....but I find that if I do not have my flash with me.....that is when I really need it.....if I have it I rarely use it:D ...... A decent Sigma EF530DG Super.... will run you approx. 250.00 USD......... there are cheaper ones but they do not have the quality.....I have used several brands of flash and not counting the camera mfg'ers brands , I have found that Achiever,Promaster are two of the crappiest I have ever used.... Sunpak and Vivatar have been the some of the finest and best built...... I say what i do about Sigma from reviews that I have read and from the fact that I have used their lenses for a very long time.....

saltydog

Thanks everyone, you guys have been extremely helpful!!! That's why I love this forum, many people here actually know what they are talking about !

MrBook2 - I finally got the idea behind slow curtain sync, thank you for putting in the effort! And the link you provided is great, I had no idea that site existed. Now I can stop hunting for my missing manual.

I am beginning to think it would be a good idea to invest in a flash unit, simply because it opens up new avenues. There's two things ahead of that though - I want a D300 badly, and I want to get an infrared conversion for my D70. Photography is a freaking expensive hobby !!!

InsuredDisaster

Kinda the same topic:

Is it a good idea to leave the flash always set on rear curtain sync? Why set it to front curtain?

duchess

Flash Units
I just purchase a SB800 flash and with tax it was about $370. I took some pictures at a party last night at a home. I still don't think the flash did much of a difference.

After reading through the post. I see that it is better to set the flash to TTL-BL (what is the BL?) Does anyone have tips on the best setting on the camera for parties and such with dim lighting?

I just practiced taking pics in my living room with the lights off. I have my camera on auto because I haven't got it all down to use manual yet. Whenchange the EV to 0, the pictures come out brighter. I don't really know why.

www.dutchandduchess.smugmug.com

MrBook2

Have a look at the posts at this blog: (Link points to start of series.)

http://nikonclspracticalguide.blogspot.com/2008/01/nikon-flash-two-separate-metering.html

Great introduction to Nikon flash use.

--Aaron

Scott_Quier

You may also find this thread useful.

duchess

Thanks for the links. They both have very good information on flash photography. Thanks.

Wineman

duchess wrote:

I just purchase a SB800 flash and with tax it was about $370. I took some pictures at a party last night at a home. I still don't think the flash did much of a difference.

After reading through the post. I see that it is better to set the flash to TTL-BL (what is the BL?) Does anyone have tips on the best setting on the camera for parties and such with dim lighting?

I just practiced taking pics in my living room with the lights off. I have my camera on auto because I haven't got it all down to use manual yet. Whenchange the EV to 0, the pictures come out brighter. I don't really know why.

www.dutchandduchess.smugmug.com

"The most advanced flash mode on the Nikon flash is TTL-BL. Originally, the BL meant BackLit, but Nikon marketing gurus changed it to mean BaLanced Fill. (Why didn't they change the initials to TTL-BF?). The word BackLit suggests the situation for which this mode is most useful."

taken from: http://nikonclspracticalguide.blogspot.com/2008/01/nikon-ttl-bl-flash.html

The D70 goes into TTL-BL mode by using Matrix metering, and the onboard flash, witch may be crappy but better than nothing... The D70 does not have FP, but it does sinc to 1/500 s witch is fast enough for most situations.

Z.