Dave, do you think the problem might be your metering mode? I would expect
the use of averaged metering to cause this type of problem, and have been
successful with the same sort of set-up (*ist-D and AF330FTZ) using spot
metering.
John Coyle
Praxis Data Solutions (www.epraxisdata.com)
Brisbane, Australia
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Oswald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <pentax-discuss@pdml.net>
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2005 12:47 PM
Subject: Re: Back from vacation: Lessons learned
Kostas Kavoussanakis wrote:
Are these with pre-flash, Dave?
Well, here's the problem I'm having with the AF330FTZ.
If I shoot at night with the AF330FTZ, with no intervention via the flash
EV menu, any shot in flash range will be highly overexposed. This is
particularly a problem if the background is out of flash range; in other
words, the subject is close but the background is distant. But
regardless, there is an overexposure issue when shooting with the flash at
night.
If I shoot with the flash in twilight conditions (ie, dusk) the problem
remains, but isn't as significant.
If I shoot in daylight conditions using the flash as a fill flash, the
problem is pretty much gone, which is to be expected, I suppose. Though
sometimes I think the flash punches the foreground up just a little too
much even in daylight conditions.
I can back the flash off a bit using the flash EV menu in the *ist-DS.
Usually I need to back off at least -1ev, but sometimes even -2ev isn't
enough. Particularly at night, -2ev in the flash EV menu isn't enough to
balance things out. In this case, I have to switch the camera over to
manual mode and manipulate the flash's effectiveness via f-stop settings
for the lens.
What is a real challenge with the AF330FTZ is shooting a night shot of a
cityscape while using the flash to illuminate the subject in the
foreground. I attempted such a shot in Hong Kong (for those of you
familiar with Hong Kong, we were at the mountain peak via the cable-car
tram). There, I wanted to take a shot of my wife with the city lights in
the background and her properly exposed in the foreground. I've taken
this sort of shot with my ZX-5n and the AF330FTZ. But I just absoutely
couldn't get it right with the *ist-DS and AF330FTZ.
It shouldn't have been that difficult of a shot; use a tripod, meter for
the city lights in the background, and allow the flash's TTL to cut the
flash short when the foreground reached proper exposure. Heck, the
camera's "night shot" mode is pretty much MADE to do this. But even
without night-shot mode, I should be able to switch to Tv mode and set the
shutter speed relatively slow. The rest should be handled by the camera
and flash.
The fact is that I never got what I thought was a decent result until I
switched the flash to ML mode (low power manual mode) and the camera to
Manual mode so that I could take care of the shutter and aperture myself.
By then my wife was pretty much tired of the whole situation and the shot
was ruined by her boredom. ;)
The AF330FTZ doesn't have a prefire mode, only TTL (not P-TTL).
<SNIP>
