I made a stupid mistake on the weekend
.
Last Saturday night, I’m at a family event, I get the request to take a few group photos as we rarely gather together. No problem I say, I grab my K-5 & flash, switch to manual mode, dial in exposure, mount flash, check FEC is -1/3, OK all set…. take photo. Chimp to check exposure and to my horror it’s almost black. Dial FEC up to 0, take another shot. Still black.
At this stage I panic a bit and decide to swap out my K-5 for my K-x. I go and get my K-x but realise it is set up for tripod shots with a 10 stop ND filter, so I have lots of settings to adjust and check before I’m ready. By now another family member had picked up their P&S and started doing a whole sequence of different group set ups. Finally I have my K-x ready and fire off a test frame. Still black!! Damn Damn. Had a thought, maybe I took it too soon and before the flash was ready? So I take another shot, phew, perfect exposure! So finally I’m ready. I take 1 more shot, literally 1, and get the “OK lets finish this, dinner is getting cold”. Ahhhh!!!!!!!!!
Turns out a few weeks ago I’d used my pop-up flash on my K-5 for a bit of fill and dialled it down by 1 2/3 stops, and I'd forgotten about it and that is what caused severe under exposure. I even had a “indoor flash” user setting on my K-5 which is set up for just this purpose, but I stupidly forgot about that mode in the heat of the moment.