Extension ring flash help

[julius]

Hi people, I was hoping you may be able to help me out.

I wanted to have a cheap rig dedicated solely to macro shots.

I have
d50 body
sunpak pf30x flash and hot shoe cord (cheap but compatible with d50)
macro lens with extension rings which makes it manual (doesn't meter etc)

Basically, I can't get the flash to fire from the hot shoe when I have the extension rings in the system.

It is obviously something to do with the relationship between the camera and lens but I can't work out a way to override it. The in-built flash shoots fine when the extension rings are attached, which means I could do a master/slave flash set-up IF my cheap flash was compatible with that :s . Is there any way to get this flash to fire? I don't care about metering or anything at this point in time, I just need it to blast some light when I press the trigger . Perhaps I need to get a flash that supports non-TTL? My camera is in manual mode with ring aperture

Google isn't helping so can anybody shed some light on this problem for me?

Thanks so much

 

[julius]

Sorry for the double post!!

 

[Overread]

Hmm odd, I would have thought the flash would fire - I take it that the rings you have are very cheap sorts which have no contacts in them and thus you have no control over the lens?
I guess it might be that with the camera not able to read the attached lens that its unable to process TTL metering with the flash and thus the flash is not able to know the power its to be set to and thus fails to fire. Best option (if the flash supports it) is to twitch the flash into manual mode and set the power level yourself. The flash should then have no problem fireing when the shutter is pressed as it won't be needing the TTL reading.

This will mean a bit of trial and error as you get your eye in for what power setting is needed in the flash so I recomend that you use your histogram when reviewing the image to assess if you need to add or deduct power from the flash on a series of test shots (check your camera manual and plug histogram into google if you are unsure/unfamiliar with using this feature).

Also I take it you have some manual aperture control with your nikon setup? That is you can set the aperture on the aperture ring of the lens and stop down (close the aperture blades) from a control on the lens itself? Otherwise you will find macro very challenging shooting the setup wide open as depth of field will be razor thin. Also if you still can't get the setup to work consider a set of Kenko AF extension tubes for nikon first - since they do have electrical contacts and are a far better bet than official nikon ones (which are far more costly)