[scorpioh]

First: Dont pull out the white reflector glass! It sets the flash zoom to 16mm (wide angle mode), this should only be used with wide angle lenses at their wide angle position, to get even lighting in the frame when shooting a room for example.

Second: Use P-TTL on the Flash and M on the camera. Set the shuterspeed and ISO to whatever you feel looks good. Hint: Slow shutterspeed ie 1/15-25 will blend in alot of ambient light, high ISO like ISO-400 will also blend in alot of natural light.

Bounce the flash straight up or 45 deg up but 90 deg to left or right. Or just anywhere there is a surface that would act as a reflector/diffuser, and put some thought in how the light bouncing will affect the subject.

I never had any problems with the AF540 and K-7, always consistent and nice exposures, but a good start is to know how it all works (no pun intended)

Here is a good start: http://neilvn.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/

Basicly tought me all i need to now to take these very simple pictures with the DA 16-45. All of them are in P-TTL, bounced, camera on M. Usually slow shutterspeed and ISO 200-400. Aperture at 5,6 always works well...
Bounce straight up


Bounce backwards on wall


Bounce backwards/to left on wall


Bounce straight up


Bounce straight up


Good example of blending flash with avaliable light. As you can see im pretty close to the mirror risking a nightmare in exposure. But point is, that i use a slow shutterspeed, 1/20 and ISO-400 to include the light from the bathroom mirror.

May I check if there will be motion blurring and handshake when you use a slow shutter like 1/20. My experience tells me that 1/20 is slow enough for these to creep in in flashless photography but somehow it doesn't quite work the same way when flash is used? What's the reason behind? The flash freezes the motion?

[amoringello]

If the ambient light is low enough, slow exposure will not allow enough light to overcome the flash.
If you use a slow shutter with high ambient light, you will get motion blur.

Like noise, it is a factor of ratio, i.e. signal to noise, or in this case ambient light to flash light.

For example, water droplet and high speed photography is actually often done by holding the shutter open seconds long in near complete darkness. The flash being between 1/1000 and 1/20,000 seconds in duration will freeze action even though the shutter us held open.. but because no other light exists, the only thing exposed on the sensor is a perfectly frozen subject.

[scorpioh]

If the ambient light is low enough, slow exposure will not allow enough light to overcome the flash.
If you use a slow shutter with high ambient light, you will get motion blur.

Like noise, it is a factor of ration, i.e. signal to noise, or in this case ambient light to flash light.

For example, water droplet and high speed photography is actually often done by holding the shutter open seconds long in near complete darkness. The flash being between 1/1000 and 1/20,000 seconds in duration will freeze action even though the shutter us held open.. but because no other light exists, the only thing exposed on the sensor is a perfectly frozen subject.

I see. Thanks. Make a lot of sense!

[the swede]

May I check if there will be motion blurring and handshake when you use a slow shutter like 1/20. My experience tells me that 1/20 is slow enough for these to creep in in flashless photography but somehow it doesn't quite work the same way when flash is used? What's the reason behind? The flash freezes the motion?

Being very non technical, i feel that using slow shutterspeed with flash does help to prevent blur, to some mild extent that i cant explain.

I always use slow speeds from 1/15 to 1/80 when im indoors shoting candids, with flash. And motion blur is clearly not that apparent then, as when i dont use flash.

Maybe its a very thin line and very dependent on how people move.....

The point is still to blend in as much ambient light as possible to get a nice exposure.

Using higher ISO also helps, i tend to be around 400-800.