Olympus Stylus Pre-Flash?

tapedeck74

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Hi,

I just picked up an Olympus Stylus 105 to replace my Minolta AF50 which has become "disfunctional".
In red eye reduction flash mode it is supposed to emit pre-flash pulses, but it seems to do these pre-flashes no matter which flash mode the camera is in. Is this normal? Or is the camera defective...

Thanks, Steve
 
Welcome to the forum.

Many cameras/flashes use a pre-flash for metering. The first flash is to determine the amount of light that will be reflected...then the flash fires with the shutter/exposure...with the correct amount of light. With some flash units, you can set the power to be manual controlled, which eliminates the pre-flash...but I'm not sure you if you can do that with a digi-cam, I doubt it.
 
Thanks for the reply Mike,

This Olympus is actually a 35mm point and shoot. The thing that confuses me is that the manual states that there will be pre-flashes on red eye reduction mode but makes no mention of them when using other flash modes.
Then again user manuals are not always know for being concise.

My experience with cameras has always been with manual SLRs and I never used a flash, so the technology is a little alien to me. My older Minolta P&S (wife's camera) didn't do pre-flashes.
My Lumix digicam does them but only on red eye mode.

Thanks again for the help, Steve
 
It's only a guess on my part, I know that modern Canon cameras use a pre-flash for metering. And yet, the theory behind it is mind boggling...I sure don't understand it all that well.
 
I called the Olympus tech support and they said that it should only pre-flash when using red-eye reduction. So, I guess that's settled. Back to the store it goes. :)
 

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