Pop up flash?

[Wandering Man]

I put my Minolta X700 to rest sometime in the 90's, when I could no longer buy or develop film in my small town. Back then, I avoided the P setting and got along well.

Now, close to 20 years later, I've bought my first DSLR (Nikon D5500). After a couple of weeks, I've decided to wean myself off the P setting.

I've forgotten a lot, but it is coming back. ISO is a a strange new world for me: You don't buy film?

Anyway, I was getting ready to take a low light photo the other evening, and setting the f-stop and shutter speed. I checked the meter and saw I would need the flash.

I drew a blank. How shutter speed needs to be at 60 to sync with the flash, but how do you determine the aperture?

I puzzled on that for a long time before I remembered that my flash had a chart that gave recommendations based on distance, ISO.

So, until I can afford to add an external flash, is there a way to compute settings with a pop up flash?
Are we still restricted to 1/60 shutter speed?

 

[JustJazzie]

Your pop-up flash should be ttl (automatic exposure) then there is a "flash compensation" somewhere in your manual if you'd like to adjust.....speaking of manuals.....have you read yours yet?

 

[tirediron]

...So, until I can afford to add an external flash, is there a way to compute settings with a pop up flash?
Are we still restricted to 1/60 shutter speed?

Absolutely. Refer to the Guide Number method of flash exposure, but, as Jazzie mentioned, it's not really necessary unless you want to shoot in manual.

As far as shutter speed goes, no, your sync speed is probably (again, as Jazzie mentioned, your manual will tell you for sure) more like 1/200 or 1/250, and with the right equipment, you can sync at almost any speed.

 

[Wandering Man]

Yes, twice, and you sent me back through it another time. Flash compensation is a new phrase for me. The manual basically tells me the camera has one, and where to find its setting in the menu.

So, explain. If you turn this on, is it then giving you a programmed override?

 

[chuasam]

use gaffer tape and hold your pop-up flash down. Never speak of it again.

 

[tirediron]

That's an excellent analogy. If you know that your camera is likely to give you too much flash exposure (in TTL mode), and you want some control over that, you can increase or decrease by whatever amount you want (within limits).

 

[Wandering Man]

use gaffer tape and hold your pop-up flash down. Never speak of it again.

Ha! I was totally surprised in the store when checking out the camera. I pressed pressed the button and the flash popped up.

I've always associated those with cheap cameras. I know, this is a cheap camera compared to many, but it is a "higher end" camera for my budget.

 

[JustJazzie]

Yes, twice, and you sent me back through it another time. Flash compensation is a new phrase for me. The manual basically tells me the camera has one, and where to find its setting in the menu.

So, explain. If you turn this on, is it then giving you a programmed override?

Yup! So your camera in auto will determine "correct exposure" if you disagree, then turn up flash compensation and it will flash brighter, and lower it if you'd like less flash power. Alternatively you can adjust exposure compensation which will adjust either Iso/ss/aperture depending on what mode you may be in at the time.

On another note, my pop up flash bounces so I don't have one, but- they sell a nifty little gadget on Amazon called a light scoop. It throws your pop-up flash towards the ceiling. Only works with low white ceilings, but looks like it would be handy to have for quick snapshots!

 

[Wandering Man]

Thanks. All of this is helpful.

...So, until I can afford to add an external flash, is there a way to compute settings with a pop up flash?
Are we still restricted to 1/60 shutter speed?

Absolutely. Refer to the Guide Number method of flash exposure, but, as Jazzie mentioned, it's not really necessary unless you want to shoot in manual.

As far as shutter speed goes, no, your sync speed is probably (again, as Jazzie mentioned, your manual will tell you for sure) more like 1/200 or 1/250, and with the right equipment, you can sync at almost any speed.

And I'm glad to get this chart.

I've got a lot of experimentation to do. I'm still learning where things are and what they do. It would be easier just to set it to P and forget about it.

But I paid too much to just use this as a point and shoot snapshot taker.

 

[Dave442]

Turn off the option for the flash to pop-up automatically.

The guide number for your flash is 12/39 (m/ft) at 100 ISO.
So at 7 feet away at f/5.6 and ISO 100 and the flash will give a good exposure.
I think this really is just a help to know distances the flash is good for.

But the best is to just leave the flash on TTL and let it adjust and use flash compensation when needed. Your kit lens probably does not even have a distance scale - but the flash is receiving that information.
You can raise the ISO to gain distance.

When you turn on the flash you can raise the shutter speed up to its maximum sync speed (1/200th on this body) and I don't think it will let you go past that. But you'll probably just adjust the shutter speed to give the amount of background (ambient) lighting you want in the shot. You are no longer stuck on 1/60 flash sync so try dragging the shutter with some slow speeds and then right up to the max 1/200th.

No reason not to play around with the built-in flash, the controls are similar to the basics of an external flash.

 

[chuasam]

Ha! I was totally surprised in the store when checking out the camera. I pressed pressed the button and the flash popped up.

I've always associated those with cheap cameras. I know, this is a cheap camera compared to many, but it is a "higher end" camera for my budget.

even a D810 has a pop-up flash sadly. I taped it down so I don't bump the release button by accident

 

[wfooshee]

Flash exposure is completely different these days than what you're used to.

What they used to call auto-exposure with flash was a thyristor "electric eye" on the flash unit itself, measuring the light coming back from the subject, and cutting off the strobe when a certain threshhold was reached. That threshhold was the correct amount of light for the exposure, assuming you'd looked up the distance correctly on the flash's tables and set your aperture as indicated in that table. At no time did the camera have any clue what the flash was doing..... it just had the sync speed set for shutter, and the aperture set as indicated on the flash chart.

These days the flash and camera have a little computer network going on, talking to each other through those extra pins in the shoe, and the camera "lends" its metering system to the flash. In TTL mode, there is an instantaneous pre-flash before the shutter that is read by the meter, and from there the correct amount of actual flash is calculated and applied during the exposure. The pre-flash is quick enough that the naked eye cannot distinguish it from the actual exposure flash, but it's enough to screw up optical slaves, if you remember using those. This happens whether the camera is in P, S, A, or M modes, or full auto. You don't HAVE to set ANYTHING on the camera if you're in P or full-auto.

(Optical slaves were extra independent flashes you might use, which were triggered when the main flash went off. Problem with those these days is that the pre-flash fires them, but before the shutter is open, and thus they contribute nothing to the picture.)

Be aware, though, that the metering system will go for best-effort at normal exposure without the flash, then add the amount of flash needed. If you're in A mode, you could get VERY long shutter speeds, as the camera tries to expose for ambient light. It knows the flash is there, and fires it, but doesn't assume the flash is the ONLY light source as you may think it would. For complete control of the camera during flash, use M and set the shutter and aperture as desired, even for TTL flash.

Flash compensation mentioned above allows you to adjust the amount of flash used, either above or below the amount calculated by the metering during the pre-flash. If you set 1 stop +, for example, the flash will fire brighter than calculated by 1 stop of exposure. To add to the confusion, this is a separate compensation from the exposure compensation that's available in the camera's metering. In other words, you can set the camera to calculate overall exposure compensation up or down however much, AND you can tell the flash to fire higher or lower than it thinks it should, again by however much.

BTW, the behavior of the pop-up flash versus an attached speedlight will have very little difference. The TTL mode is metered in the camera by a preflash, just like the pop-up, and the amount of flash is calculated before the exposure and communicated to the flash unit as "Give this level of flash power, please!" The difference is that a speedlight is WAY more powerful, and being larger, is farther off the lens axis which reduces red-eye. Both type of units will have manual settings as well as the TTL automatic, and the limitations of using them in combination with the camera's own auto-exposure settings (way long shutter in a dark setting if using A mode, for example) apply to both.

The pop-up flash pops up automatically in many of the "scene" modes of the camera, but never in the P, S, A, or M modes. You should forget the scene modes even exist, anyway.

 

[Wandering Man]

Wfooshee,

Great comprehensive explanation.

I am sooo behind the times here.

I'll try to grab a few hour alone with my camera this weekend and play with indoor shooting. Wife will either feel like a movie star or be very annoyed.

 

[WayneF]

I drew a blank. How shutter speed needs to be at 60 to sync with the flash, but how do you determine the aperture?

I puzzled on that for a long time before I remembered that my flash had a chart that gave recommendations based on distance, ISO.

So, until I can afford to add an external flash, is there a way to compute settings with a pop up flash?
Are we still restricted to 1/60 shutter speed?

Not disagreeing with what's been said, but adding a bit specific to your questions.

We choose aperture according to the available flash power. A bit of experience quickly makes it be obvious. The internal flash is tiny, and needs wider aperture - perhaps f/4 to have enough power to be useful. An external hot shoe flash has much greater power, and can use a stopped down aperture. Except, it can do bounce flash too, which then needs much more power (up to ceiling and back), and about f/4 becomes more feasible then. But it has power to do it.

The camera metering system is ONLY about the ambient light. The camera settings it chooses is about the ambient light. This all occurs before the flash has even fired to see it. And then later, flash has its own metering system. But it has to work into the camera settings that ambient set. We might instead choose aperture more specifically to help the flash.

So for example, in a dim room where flash is needed, but without the flash yet being enabled, then perhaps it meters maybe f/5.6 at 1/4 second (just some slow shutter like that).
That is for the ambient, for a picture without the flash.
But we are not going to use the ambient, we are going to choose flash.

Reach up and enable the flash, and the shutter speed jumps to 1/60 second (in camera A or P modes). This is not about the flash exposure, and it is not about the ambient exposure. It is not metered, and not about anything, except that if you are using flash, 1/4 second is of no value to you, it might as well be 1/60. The flash is near instantaneous, and it doesn't care how long the shutter may stay open (flash exposure is not affected by shutter speed. Ambient exposure is.)

But the flash still has to work into whatever aperture was set.
We really need to choose it to help the flash.

Re: your old chart, and calculating for the flash. Your D5500 has a Guide Number of 39 (feet) at ISO 100 in Manual flash mode (spec chart in rear of manual). That is used computing this way... for a subject distance of say 6 feet, the proper aperture is GN39/6 feet = f/6.5 (camera has a f/6.3 setting). So set manual flash mode, full power level, then measure 6 feet, set f/6.3, and that distance will be exposed properly. This assumes ISO 100. If Auto ISO is on, it can be different. Manual flash mode cannot react to Auto ISO, however Nikon does not allow Auto ISO to increase at all if it sees there is a Manual flash (ISO stays at the Minimum set). Larger flashes have much higher guide numbers, much greater range. (More about Guide Numbers at Understanding Guide Numbers including GN Calculator ).

You are not restricted to 1/60 second, that is just what the automation chooses. Camera models D7100 and up have a menu to select other (slower) values, but 1/60 is default on all. It is called a Minimum Shutter Speed With Flash. It is an arbitrary decision.
The only way to make it faster (in camera A or P modes) is to go out into brighter light that will meter higher.

But you can use camera Manual mode and set any shutter speed (any not exceeding D5500 maximum shutter sync speed of 1/200 second). The TTL flash is still automatic flash exposure in any camera mode, including Manual.

The flash exposure is not affected by shutter speed (it is faster than any shutter), but shutter speed does affect the ambient light, which indoors, is usually negligibly low, insufficient, ignorable, because we are using flash instead. If the ambient is so low, it is out of play, it does not matter what it is. We are using flash instead. (but if using fill flash out in bright sun, we obviously have to pay attention to the ambient).

Camera Manual mode is commonly used for flash indoors, so we can also affect the ambient light... which is typically orange indoors. We can keep it all out of the picture with faster shutter, or allow some of it in with slower shutter - our choice. The TTL flash is still automatic exposure either way, and not affected by shutter speed.

The camera does have Slow Sync and/or Rear Curtain Sync settings, which will use the metered slow 1/4 second, or whatever the ambient actually metered. In these sync modes, the shutter speed will NOT increase to 1/60 second. This is special use however, NOT for normal flash pictures.

There are several ifs and buts, but flash is where the fun is, and it's not hard (but we do have to use our heads to think about it). If you are going to get into flash much, you need a bigger hot shoe flash, specifically one that will do bounce flash, which is a great thing, makes a huge difference.