Flash miss fire

[redtippmann]

Hi everyone I have a d50 and a promaster 5250dx strobe. When I take pictures with the in camera flash or with the promaster it never seems to fire on time. Is there a setting that I can try? I already have tryed normal and rear modes. So now what?

 

[redtippmann]

Bumpy

 

[Steph]

Hi everyone I have a d50 and a promaster 5250dx strobe. When I take pictures with the in camera flash or with the promaster it never seems to fire on time. Is there a setting that I can try? I already have tryed normal and rear modes. So now what?

What do you mean? Can you post some examples? If you get some black bands on the image, it is because you use too fast a shutter speed (faster that the flash sync speed). Give us more details.

 

[Big Mike]

I'm guessing that you are using the built-in flash to trigger the other light?

If so, what is happening is that your camera's flash is using a pre-flash for metering. It actually fires once, the camera reads the reflected light, then the flash fires again when the shutter opens. It all happens so fast that you don't notice.
The problem is that this pre-flash triggers the strobe, and the strobe can't fire again so quickly when the flash fires the second time.

If you can set your flash to manual, that will not use a pre-flash.

Or better yet, get a remote radio trigger for the strobe.

 

[redtippmann]

ok i will explain a little better:

I have this strobe pointed like this on the hot shoe on my Nikon D50

This is an example of my d50 w/o a flash set on f/1.8 and a shutter speed of 60 and ISO 800

this is a pucture with the same settings but with the flash attached on the hot shoe

so as you can see when the flash is fired(at +1) it doesn't increase the brightness, any ideas?

 

[Big Mike]

Looks brighter to me.

 

[redtippmann]

ok well thats not a great example. but shouldn't the flash brighten the subject a little more than that?

 

[AUZambo]

ok well thats not a great example. but shouldn't the flash brighten the subject a little more than that?

All things being equal, probably so...but I'm guessing the camera adjusted aperture, shutter speed, iso, or something else to adjust for the dramatic increase in lighting.

What shooting mode are you using?

I've really gotta install firefox on this computer so I can install the exif data plug-in.

 

[Big Mike]

If it did, it would be over exposed...wouldn't it?

Does that flash have an 'auto' mode or something similar...or is it dedicated for you camera's TTL system? If so, then it's setting it's output to what you set or to the aperture setting directly. So to make it brighter, you would need to adjust it even more to the positive (or just put the thing into manual mode and adjust accordingly).

 

[redtippmann]

I have it in manual mode and the flash does use TTL so I will try putting the flash in manual mode for when i need a little more light,hope that works.

 

[Big Mike]

Well, if the flash uses TTL, then you should be able to adjust the FEC to make it brighter/darker.

Of course, shooting with the flash in manual will make the flash output consistent, so all you have to do to make it brighter is open the aperture or raise the ISO. If you know how to set it up in manual, you can avoid the TTL and take full control.