Hi all First off, many thanks to those who offered advice. Apologies if this reply is misplaced, I am subscribed to the digest and it sometimes gets a bit confusing as to who replying and whee I should be replying to.
I have one quick question to Tom, who kindly went through quite a bit regarding flash: >> I understand that I can manually set the >> camera 2 stops underexposed and set the flash exposure to 2 >> stops over, >Well, you could do that, but your shots would have 2 stops too much flash. I'm confused as to why I'd be exposing incorrectly on this - if I deliberately ask the camera to underexpose ambient by two stops, and after that simply ask the flash to take this setting and add two stops to it (at least that's my assumption of what +2 flash comp would do), wouldn't that therefore be the correct exposure? The only way I can see this not being the case is if the flash TTL exposure takes absolutely no notice of the camera exposure settings, and simply works out what it thinks is best, in which case my two stops flash compensation would indeed be two stops overexposure. If anyone can fill me in on this (pun not intended) I'd really be very grateful. I think, on the balance of it, I may just have to go with ambient light as it's patently obvious I don't really understand how flash works, and I'd rather have slightly soft, grainy pictures (ISO 3200 film) than shots of drummers looking like startled bunnies in car headlights. After having seen how Frank's shots came out, I'd be more than happy with anything looking like those (http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder? folder_id=383331 for those who haven't got the link from the previous message). Unfortunately I have a student lighting engineer who seems to enjoy using rear lighting a bit too much for my liking, so there are few (if any) kickers lighting the face. That would be one area where I might just have a crack with some standard fill flash - in which case I'll just turn on the flash with no compensation and leave it entirely to it's own devices. Someone suggested a Pz-1 and 500FTZ combo, well I can borrow a Pz-1 but I'm stuck with the 400FTZ unfortunately - limited funds mean everything is bought used as and where it turns up. Is it reasonable to suggest that Pentax have made this balancing ambient and flash thing unnecessarily difficult to do with the MZ series (to recap, I have an MZ-3 and 400FTZ)? By the way, what's PUG and PAW? Thanks for all your comments, the battle of the bands is tonight and I've just realised I'm down to 2 fast films. I'll let you know how I get on, and will try to get the photos up somewhere. Cheers Matt
