Scott Loveless wrote: >Hey, Mark! You enlightened us over the weekend about using P-TTL flash >with the camera on "manual". Care to re-enlighten? I'm afraid the >booze and lack of sleep has purged that memory from the old noggin.
You talkin' to me or the other Mark? (You weren't alone with regards to booze and lack of sleep.) Anyway, here's how you do it: Set camera to manual exposure. Attach flash with bounce card. Set flash to P-TTL auto. Set shutter speed the slowest speed you feel safe hand-holding; if you're using a zoom, assume the longest focal length it reaches. Set the aperture a stop or two down from wide open -- there's something of a judgment call here because it depends on the focal length of the lens your using, how much DOF you want and how much ambient light there is. The result of the above procedure should be that the meter in the camera will show underexposure pretty much everywhere you point it (in locations you're going to be shooting the wedding). If it regularly shows more than two stops of underexposure or if it shows overexposure anywhere you'll need to change shutter speed, aperture or ISO. You often have to compromise here... So now you've got a slow shutter speed you can hand-hold, an aperture that gives you the DOF you want and exposure that varies from perfect to "about-two-stops-under" everywhere you're shooting. The P-TTL flash will automatically provide whatever amount of fill is necessary to make the overall exposure good. (Your manual exposure setting shouldn't show overexposure anywhere because, obviously, the flash can't subtract ambient light when there's too much, it can only provide extra light when there's too little.) You can experiment with dialing in a little underexposure to the flash, to see if it suits your equipment setup and/or taste. This setup won't deliver *perfect* results all the time but it will give you very usable results almost all the time. When you're in really dark spots (two stops under on the meter) the flash will be contributing more of the total exposure than you'd ideally like. And when you're in bright areas it will contribute nothing. But you'll almost always get something you can use. This is what you want for weddings because, for most shots, you get only one chance. I learned this technique from a local wedding pro who does high end (*very* expensive) weddings. He shoots mostly PJ style (but with the usual requisite posed shots). He usually works alone unless he's providing video services as well. He does extraordinary work and makes a ton of money doing it. He's won scads of awards, which he refuses to display in his studio: He'll only display prints of his work there. We met when an "Internet Directory Service" tried to scam him and gave me and my web site as a reference even though I had nothing to do with them. He called their bluff by calling me :) I worked a couple of weddings with him to see if I might do some work for him. I decided against getting into wedding photography but I learned a *lot* from the experience. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
