Silly, silly q

gabelimom

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I am finally caving in and buying a SB 600 for my Nikon D70, as I have a party to shoot on Saturday and need the flash. Essentially, the gig is going to pay for the new flash. Ya'll know how that goes. :wink:

My q is: when I used a Vivitar flash at another party I was shooting a while back, the images came out ghostly. Do I set the Nikon on Automatic and use the flash, or do I have to meter every time I want to shoot? If so, won't that hinder me from capturing those spontaneous moments?

I will read through the manual tomorrow when I buy the flash at B&H, but wanted to get a heads-up ahead of time, since I basically have two days to learn it. Thanks to all in advance, my TPF friends.
 
Can you describe "ghostly" a bit more or post a photo that shows what you're meaning?

I shoot Nikon but don't know much about the D70. I don't think it has the Commander mode for wireless flash does it?

One pretty cool trick if you're fairly close to your subjects and don't want to blast the scene is to reverse shoot the flash. Turn the flash head backwards like this.

If you can't go wireless out of the box (Commander mode) you can buy a sync cord and hand hold the flash to get different effects with you flash like this (imagine a cord between camera and flash). Now, someone else said they had sweaty palms and were afraid the flash would slip out of their hand, so I suggested this. :lmao:

At the very least, you should be able to set the camera and the flash to TTL and let them sort out the exposure together. Just remember that a bounced flash off the ceiling or wall or anything else for that matter is better than a straight on blast IMO.

Have fun and good luck.
 
The D70 can indeed be set to wireless commander mode:mrgreen:

Indeed it can, depending on the trigger method used and source camera. I'm not famliar enough with the D70, though.

I'd love to see an example of that "ghostly" picture too, though. Can't fix what I have no idea is the issue.

I'm willing to guess massive motion blur, improper focus or shallow DOF ... but thats a total guess without any basis in fact.
 
The ghostly images could be caused by a slow shutter speed.. If the person is back lit, they can have a black halo around them on the photo since the camera is recording them as a silhouette after the flash fires but the shutter is still open (hope I explained that well! :)).

Getting started with the SB600 is very easy, just put in batteries, stick it on your camera, turn it on and set your camera to P mode. The flash/camera will determine the flash power automatically. If the flash is too bright or too dark, use the arrow keys on the flash to raise or lower the relative flash power (this is similar to playing with exposure compensation). Also experiment with bouncing the flash off the ceiling, it will make a huge improvement in soft/even lighting!
 
You should have no problems with the D70 set to 'Green box' mode, and the SB600 to AutoTTL. There is no need to meter each scene, and what andrew99 said. Good luck.
 
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! You all have helped me out tremendously!!!

Oh, and by "ghostly", I mean that the subjects in the shot were blurred, and had a trail following them, as if I had left the shutter open and moved the camera.
 
Oh, and by "ghostly", I mean that the subjects in the shot were blurred, and had a trail following them, as if I had left the shutter open and moved the camera.
Well, that's probably what you did... or the opposite, whereby the Flash was set to Rear Curtain Sync... which means it fired when the shutter closed again, not upon initial opening.

For what it's worth, it can be a cool look. First company I ever started was a record company (yes, we actually released vinyl) and our "staff" photographer used this for great effect. His shots always caught the rave atmosphere...
 
I wasn't able to purchase the SB-600 flash I would have liked to have used for tomorrow night's gig. Instead, I am going to brave it with my old flash. I am going to practice tonight to make sure I don't make the same mistake as before.

Now, the new prob is that this flash has an 8.5 second recycle time!!!! The fact that I won't be able to fire for almost ten seconds between shots has me freaking out. What am I going to do in that time period, esp. if I have everyone posed? How do I "stall" them for 8.5 seconds? Should I repose everyone so it doesn't look like I'm stalling!?!?

I'm soooooo nervous now...
 
8.5 seconds is a long time. Load up on a bunch of jokes to keep the atmosphere light hearted. Practice your peoples skills to the max. Ask questions that get them to talk about themselves. Subconsciously, we all like to talk about ourselves. WHING IT and make sure you put off the vibe that YOU are having fun. You can cry after the gig is over. :lol:
 
Also -- 8.5 seconds should be the recycle time for a full flash. You won't be using full power most of the time, so recycle will be much shorter.
 

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