SB 700 ... Help Please ...

[phillipkane]

Hello ...

I attempted to photograph a club event last evening and stumbled upon some inexperience problems ... I own the D7000 and had the SB 700 mounted in the hot shoe ... On the D7000, I remain in Manual mode, so I can have control, but encountered problems using the SB 700, an item I had purchased a couple days ago ... The lighting in this club seemed to be non-existant, and even at ISO 6400, and an aperture of f/4 or so, the shutter had to be longer than a second ... I decreased the ISO to the range 400 - 800 and increased the shutter to 1/60th of a second, but doing so, the exposure meter appeared as a complete under-exposure ... Using the SB 700 in TTL mode, the couple pictures i shot seemed to be lit, but seeing as how the meter shows as under-exposed, how do I know the SB 700 is producing a correct exposure ... ?

Does a speedlight such as an SB 700 produce a correct exposure regardless of the exposure meter reading ... ? Please help and Thanks : )

 

[JaronRH]

I think that the best way to think about it is this: With a flash you will have two exposures. One that the camera calculates for itself and the other for the flash. When the flash is in TTL mode, it acts a lot like your camera being in "auto" in that it looks at the scene as the camera sees it (thus "thru-the-lens" -> TTL) by firing a quick pre-flash then tries to provide enough power to allow the camera to properly expose the image.

So in your case, the camera recognized that the scene was going to be underexposed but the flash had enough power, given your subjects distance, to compensate for the difference in needed light.

 

[jwbryson1]

The camera is metering for the ambient light, not the flash.

 

[Mach0]

Turn your flash to manual mode. You can control how much light from the flash. Also, what lens are you using? @ what aperture?

 

[phillipkane]

I was using the 18 - 105 3.5 - 5.6 variable aperture lens ... I also own the 35 1.8 but I prefer the balance the 18 - 105 gives ... I used both lenses but it did not help ... Thanks ...

 

[SCraig]

As documented in the SB-700 owner's manual, there is an indicator light in the viewfinder and another one on the back of the SB-700. If they are FLASHING then the SB-700 did NOT achieve a proper exposure. If it is on solid then the SB-700 DID achieve a proper exposure.

 

[gardy]

As documented in the SB-700 owner's manual, there is an indicator light in the viewfinder and another one on the back of the SB-700. If they are FLASHING then the SB-700 did NOT achieve a proper exposure. If it is on solid then the SB-700 DID achieve a proper exposure.

+1