[Ben_Edict]

I think that just looks like a longer exposure, and the flash did fire: it can look like that when a shooter isn't expecting the long shutter speed and is actually already moving the camera as though the exposure is done before the shutter closes.

I bet the SR was actually on, just trying to compensate for big movement of one kind or another.

Exactly what I think, too. Set the camera either to X-sync or to a suitable exposure time in M (manual) mode, which would allow to get some ambient light (like 1/60s) into the shot and everything will be fine.

Ben

[Wheatfield]

The picture was taken before the flash was fully recharged. This caused the camera to try for an ambient light exposure (longer shutter speed), and then when the flash fired, you got the benefit of that as well.

[pauln]

Wow, thanks very much for all the replies (many more than I expected). I am sorry I did not include the exif info - I thought aperature, shutter, and ISO would be sufficient. I did not want to complicate things with too much info, but I guess there is not such a thing when it comes to photography.

I am not at home right now and don't have access to the photo. But, I will get the exif info for it and for a good photo and post that info later this evening.

Wow, thanks very much for all the replies (many more than I expected). I am sorry I did not include the exif info - I thought aperature, shutter, and ISO would be sufficient. I did not want to complicate things with too much info, but I guess there is not such a thing when it comes to photography.

I am not at home right now and don't have access to the photo. But, I will get the exif info for it and for a good photo and post that info later this evening.

Too much info is better than not enough.

[Wheatfield]

Wow, thanks very much for all the replies (many more than I expected). I am sorry I did not include the exif info - I thought aperature, shutter, and ISO would be sufficient. I did not want to complicate things with too much info, but I guess there is not such a thing when it comes to photography.

I am not at home right now and don't have access to the photo. But, I will get the exif info for it and for a good photo and post that info later this evening.

In this case, posting the photo was enough. That's one of the really obvious problems.

[Oggy]

Looking at the glaucoma effect reminded me of this -



We had had a BBQ and it was getting cold, so we went back inside. Later I heard a scratching noise so I looked outside and saw this chap huddled up to the warm bbq. I grabbed the camera with whatever lens it had on at the time, as it happened the 50-135 and fired in green mode so all credit to the camera and none to me. The picture came out with red eye which I automatically removed with Picassa.

I wonder if this is something similar.

[pauln]

I have attached the exif information (.txt) for the "bad" photo as well as for another photo that came out fine. From what you folks have posted so far, it sounds like the shutter was just too slow or else the flash never recharged, but the exif info may help you figure it out further.

Bad:





Good:





Thanks for all of the help. I appreciate it.

Attached Files

	bad_photo_exif.txt (3.1 KB, 175 views)
	good_photo_exif.txt (3.1 KB, 153 views)

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Last edited by pauln; 01-20-2010 at 07:35 PM. Reason: I thought it is easier to see the exif info from the pentax utility software so I added screenshots of that info

Lighting looks about the same for both shots so, regardless of whether flash fired or not, I'd say the main culprit is the exposure time.

[Marc Sabatella]

Posting EXIF shouldn't require a separate step - as long as it hasn't been stripped out of the image itself, it's visible to anyone who knows how to find it. But some PP programs will strip it out unless you ask them not to (eg, photoshop "save for web").

[ma318]

bad photo uses shutter speed of 1/13, f4.5 , ISO 800 , Night Scene Mode
good photo uses shutter speed of 1/80. f4.5 , ISO 800, Portrait Mode


As others had said, the problem is with the slower shutter speed.

In Night Scene mode, the camera would set a slower shutter speed to try to expose for the ambient light.
In Portrait mode, the camera assumes the subject could move so it set a higher shutter speed of 1/80 sec. The higher shutter speed resulted in cutting off a lot of the ambient light and prevented blur/ghosting due to subject movement and/or camera shake.

My recommendation to you is to use Portrait Mode when taking this type of INDOOR flash photo to get better results.
You would want to use Night Scene Mode, when you are outside at night with a background with lights that is relatively far away. And you want to see the person as well as the background in your photo. For example, with a person standing in front of you and far behind the person is a large tree with Christmas lights.

When you use flash, you are in fact doing a double exposure. One exposure from the ambient light and another exposure from the flash light.
In general, when you are using flash under indoor artificial lighting, it is better to set a higher shutter speed and/or smaller aperture and/or lower ISO to cut out the artificial light and just have the flash lighting up your subject. You will get better color because it is much easier for the camera to do color balance on one source of lighting then two lighting sources with different color temperature. If you really want the indoor artificial ambient light in your photo, then you should gel your flash to match the color temperature of the artificial light.

[snostorm]

bad photo uses shutter speed of 1/13, f4.5 , ISO 800 , Night Scene Mode
good photo uses shutter speed of 1/80. f4.5 , ISO 800, Portrait Mode


As others had said, the problem is with the slower shutter speed.

In Night Scene mode, the camera would set a slower shutter speed to try to expose for the ambient light.
In Portrait mode, the camera assumes the subject could move so it set a higher shutter speed of 1/80 sec. The higher shutter speed resulted in cutting off a lot of the ambient light and prevented blur/ghosting due to subject movement and/or camera shake.

My recommendation to you is to use Portrait Mode when taking this type of INDOOR flash photo to get better results.
You would want to use Night Scene Mode, when you are outside at night with a background with lights that is relatively far away. And you want to see the person as well as the background in your photo. For example, with a person standing in front of you and far behind the person is a large tree with Christmas lights.

When you use flash, you are in fact doing a double exposure. One exposure from the ambient light and another exposure from the flash light.
In general, when you are using flash under indoor artificial lighting, it is better to set a higher shutter speed and/or smaller aperture and/or lower ISO to cut out the artificial light and just have the flash lighting up your subject. You will get better color because it is much easier for the camera to do color balance on one source of lighting then two lighting sources with different color temperature. If you really want the indoor artificial ambient light in your photo, then you should gel your flash to match the color temperature of the artificial light.

I was wrong, and the flash did fire. . .

ma318 is correct, but missed one thing -- "Auto Pict" mode. In this mode, the camera chooses what it thinks is the correct mode to shoot, and chose wrong for the first shot. To prevent this, as ma318 stated, choose the more appropriate "portrait mode", and all the shots will turn out the same.

Good exif info always helps

Scott

[ma318]

Scott, thanks for picking that up. That's an important detail.

I guess thats the price one has to pay for shooting in complete auto mode and letting the camera making all the decisions. It will try its best to get it right. But once in a while, it could guess wrong. "Wrong" in the sense that it did not give the result you wanted. I would say in good lighting condition (outside with daylight), the camera will guess correctly 95% of the time. But in trickier low light condition, it would guess correctly 80% of the time. You could help the camera to get it right by choosing the mode.

I notice in the bad photo, the lower background wall was lighter in color so it reflected more light (kind of like a night scene background with dark sky at top and lighted buildings at the bottom). That caused the camera to think there was some important highlight in the background and it should try to capture it by selecting "night scene" mode. In the good photo, it was all brick wall so less light was reflected and the reflected light pattern was uniform. The camera decided there was no point to capture the reflected ambient light in the background and went with Portrait mode. The camera makes its decision based the differences in light intensity and location of theses differences. It does not know what it really is looking at like we can with our eyes/brain.