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fest3er · 08-25-2008, 02:10 PM

First, let me flash back 20 years to my SuperProgram and AF200SA (with Pentax 50mm kit lens, CPC 28-85 and 80-200 zooms--they have Ricoh mounts which nearly gave me heart failure when I first attached one to the K20D). It didn't matter which lens I used or at what zoom or which speed film I used (64-1600). With the camera set on auto (I don't remember how well it worked with shutter priority and aperture priority), I always got near perfect exposure with that flash and camera, even at ranges close to or somewhat exceeding the flash's 20' max range. I even got a fairly decent picture inside a Carlsbad Caverns big room, bracing the camera, setting it for an 8 sec. exposure, blocking the flash's sensor and manually firing the flash several times to light up the room.

Six years ago I bought a Sony F707. It's an adequate snapshot camera, but after 6000 pictures, I've outgrown its uneven colors, ultra-slow autofocus and extremely limited capacity (128MB memory stick). So it was time to buy a real camera again.

So I bought a K20D (w/18-55 kit zoom) and a Metz 58 ("pay once, cry once" was recently advised in this forum). I played with setting the 58 as a wireless slave in the middle of a large-ish room with vertical bounce. (The 58 doesn't seem to want to fire as a slave unless it gets a strong flash from the K20's built-in flash; hence putting the 58 on its stand in the middle of the room.) But by golly the entire room was well lit; I was amazed.

However, with the 58 attached to the camera, I'm finding it nigh-on impossible to get a properly-exposed picture. I got slightly better exposure but still inconsistent results setting exposure compensation to +.5-1.5. SO far I haven't found any combination or camera and flash settings that even approaches consistency.

Whilst I'm certainly not new to photography and am quite familiar with depth of field, aperture, shutter and other effects of SLR cameras, I'm at a loss here. What'm I doing wrong? Or what am I not doing that I should be doing? Do y'all have any concrete ideas on where I can start to get consistent flash pictures and to get consistent fill-flash pictures? (I expect they would be two very different settings.) Even enigmas and conundrums might be helpful.

Much of my picture-taking is of people in dynamic situations, so there is typically little time available to compose the picture and really not enough time to manually set the camera and flash for each and every picture. Someone in a thread here called it 'press photography', which is a rather apt description.

I generally try to record 'memories' for people, so snapshot mode generally works well. But to avoid the 'I wish I'd had/used a better camera for that shot" times, I take all pics in high resolution. If I end up with 1-3% gems out of 500 snapshots, it's worth it.

Thanks!
Neal

08-25-2008, 02:10 PM	#1
fest3er New Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Gallery Photos: 0 Posts: 9	K20D + Metz 58; what'm I doin' wrong? First, let me flash back 20 years to my SuperProgram and AF200SA (with Pentax 50mm kit lens, CPC 28-85 and 80-200 zooms--they have Ricoh mounts which nearly gave me heart failure when I first attached one to the K20D). It didn't matter which lens I used or at what zoom or which speed film I used (64-1600). With the camera set on auto (I don't remember how well it worked with shutter priority and aperture priority), I always got near perfect exposure with that flash and camera, even at ranges close to or somewhat exceeding the flash's 20' max range. I even got a fairly decent picture inside a Carlsbad Caverns big room, bracing the camera, setting it for an 8 sec. exposure, blocking the flash's sensor and manually firing the flash several times to light up the room. Six years ago I bought a Sony F707. It's an adequate snapshot camera, but after 6000 pictures, I've outgrown its uneven colors, ultra-slow autofocus and extremely limited capacity (128MB memory stick). So it was time to buy a real camera again. So I bought a K20D (w/18-55 kit zoom) and a Metz 58 ("pay once, cry once" was recently advised in this forum). I played with setting the 58 as a wireless slave in the middle of a large-ish room with vertical bounce. (The 58 doesn't seem to want to fire as a slave unless it gets a strong flash from the K20's built-in flash; hence putting the 58 on its stand in the middle of the room.) But by golly the entire room was well lit; I was amazed. However, with the 58 attached to the camera, I'm finding it nigh-on impossible to get a properly-exposed picture. I got slightly better exposure but still inconsistent results setting exposure compensation to +.5-1.5. SO far I haven't found any combination or camera and flash settings that even approaches consistency. Whilst I'm certainly not new to photography and am quite familiar with depth of field, aperture, shutter and other effects of SLR cameras, I'm at a loss here. What'm I doing wrong? Or what am I not doing that I should be doing? Do y'all have any concrete ideas on where I can start to get consistent flash pictures and to get consistent fill-flash pictures? (I expect they would be two very different settings.) Even enigmas and conundrums might be helpful. Much of my picture-taking is of people in dynamic situations, so there is typically little time available to compose the picture and really not enough time to manually set the camera and flash for each and every picture. Someone in a thread here called it 'press photography', which is a rather apt description. I generally try to record 'memories' for people, so snapshot mode generally works well. But to avoid the 'I wish I'd had/used a better camera for that shot" times, I take all pics in high resolution. If I end up with 1-3% gems out of 500 snapshots, it's worth it. Thanks! Neal