I am having to continually lighten up all of my shots in Capture NX2 when using a SB-900 flash indoors. from the attached photo you can see that something is very very wrong. I am using a D300 with the SB-900. I'll list the settings I used for this terrible shot. Lens is a 24-70 2.8 focal length 24, the shooting mode was P. From the CaptureNX2 numbers it showed that the aperture was f7.1 1/60 speed and TTLBL. Because I saw I was having problems I changed the ISO from 400 to 800 for this shot but if anything it was worse than ISO400. I am noticing that the EV indicator is flashing and showing a negative exposure line on the camera.
My problem might be that I am expecting the camera and flash should work OK in P mode and nothing changed on the flash other than making sure that TTLBL is selected. My last 300 odd indoor shots prove that much more is needed.
HELP!!....what am I doing wrong
Robin Stevens
South Australia

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Attachment #1, (jpg file)

Hi Robin,

I think the biggest problem here is that you used TTL-BL mode. TTL-BL tries to balance the subject to the ambient. In a low ambient situation like this, the TTL-BL mode is darkening the picture to try to make the subject the same brightness as the ambient. This has the effect of darkening the whole image.

Regular TTL works much better in low ambient conditions.

Secondly, I recommend you use camera Manual mode with ISO 400 and 1/80th shutter, and f/4. This will darken the background and allow the flash to expose the subject. You can then adjust the shutter up or down to control the brightness of the background to your taste.

Also, I invite you to read my blogs on this and more, starting here: http://nikonclspracticalguide.blogspot.com/2008/01/nikon-flash-two-separate-metering.html . They are all written about the SB-800, but the CLS concepts and modes are all the same as with the SB-900. One of these days I'll get an SB-900 and see what there is that's new that I can add to my blogs about.

Russ
Nikonian Team Member
Russell MacDonald Photography
Nikon CLS Practical Guide

Hi Russ..Thanks for your prompt reply
I had only just finished book marking your blogsite from another post you did . It has some great reading which I will study asap. I forgot to say I was using bounce flash as well for that shot. The embarrassing thing with that shot is that I took 55 shots of this family group xmas day. I have managed to salvage some good shots with the help of the fill light feature in picasa 3.
So the bottom line is to go manual with 1/80, f/4 and, for instance aiming for fill light in a outdoor shot the aperture would need to a higher number?
I have a SB-800 as well as the SB-900 so I probably should find out how to utilize the two flashes.
thanks again
Robin

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Start with TTL rather than TTL-BL. Bounce or not, TTL-BL is trying NOT to be the primary source of light. Pretty clearly you needed it to be the main source of light, since your results are darker than you anticipate. TTL in aperture or shutter priority mode will render this scene much more normally.

_____
Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

My gallery is online. Comments and critique welcomed any time!

>So the bottom line is to go manual with 1/80, f/4 and, for
>instance aiming for fill light in a outdoor shot the aperture
>would need to a higher number?

AND use regular TTL - NOT TTL-BL.

Russ
Nikonian Team Member
Russell MacDonald Photography
Nikon CLS Practical Guide

Thanks for all your replies. Can the correct exposure be summed by watching the E/V read out in the camera and correcting the E/V aperture line by the front sub-command dial for each shot using ISO 400 and speed 1/80?
robin

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>Thanks for all your replies. Can the correct exposure be
>summed by watching the E/V read out in the camera and
>correcting the E/V aperture line by the front sub-command dial
>for each shot using ISO 400 and speed 1/80?
>robin

Hi Robin,

No.

I think you are confusing the ambient portion of the exposure with the flash portion. They are two separate exposures that add together in every flash shot.

The flash exposure system controls the flash portion of the shot. This works independently from the camera and it doesn't change no matter what camera settings you make (as long as you are using regular TTL and not TTL-BL).

The camera exposure system controls the ambient portion of the image. What you are seeing in the viewfinder are the camera settings. They control the ambient portion of the exposure, which is mostly determining the brightness of the background for indoor shots in low ambient conditions. Typically, the ambient portion of the exposure should be underexposed by about 3 stops. This makes the background dark but still easily visible. This also minimizes the effect that the ambient has on the subject.

This is why shooting with camera in Manual mode works so well. You can set it to underexpose the ambient by 3 stops and leave it. Then, you let the flash handle all the rest.

OTOH, If you set the camera to expose the ambient fully, then the flash will add to that which will overexpose the subject. Keep the ambient way down to simplify your flash shooting.

Russ
Nikonian Team Member
Russell MacDonald Photography
Nikon CLS Practical Guide

Personally I don't think TTL-BL is to blame. There are couple of things that can go wrong but based on your description, one likely cause is no enough flash output.

In other post you mentioned that you were doing bounce flash. Can you tell us the flash head angle? Did you use the diffusion dome? How tall was the celling and what color was it?

You said "I am noticing that the EV indicator is flashing ...". It sounds like the SB-900 was telling you it didn't have enough power for that photo.

Simple fix is to bring more direct flash to the scene. Reduce the flash head tilt angle or put the diffusion dome on.

http://dptnt.com/2009/09/bounce-flash-tips/

Max

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From memory the ceiling was a wooden type of material but definately not white and of normal house height, although the walls were a reddish brown brick. I had the head at 60 degrees and no diffusion dome. The flashing E/V was in the camera and the negative line showed well out to the right. I would have thought that the SB-900 would have had enough horse power to light up what was a small room? To me it seems like the camera and the flash could not work out what settings were required for that room which was not dark by any means, As it was, a simple point and shoot camera would have taken better shots
"Simple fix is to bring more direct flash to the scene" I have not tried the diffusion dome but will next time. I also have a Gary Fong diffuser, plus a SB-800 which I would like to be able to use with the SB-900. Is there any easy reading regarding using two flashes together?
I think one of the main problems is that the underexposure did not show up in the camera when viewing. In hind site i should have downloaded a couple of shots onto my notebook.
Thanks for your help
Robin

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Basically you didn't have any good bounce surface for proper bounce flash. With the flash head tilted up 60 degrees most of the flash hit the bricks and the wood ceilings and little was reflected back to your subject.

The diffusion dome should help. In stead of a flash light pointing away from the scene, you have a light bulb distributing light all over.

You can use histogram to help with exposure. Also your photo was a little dark but not too bad. If you shoot RAW it should be quite easy to brighten it up.

Max

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>To me it seems like the camera and the flash could not work
>out what settings were required for that room...

The camera and Speedlight were doing what you had told them to do

Bouncing the light off a dark surface probably hasn't helped, but as Russ says, by far the most likely explanation for the underexposure is your use of TTL-BL rather than plain TTL.

Brian
Welsh Nikonian
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Reading the thread a bit more thoroughly this time, you've got several issues:

1) You're using TTL-BL instead of TTL. Really. TTL-BL means that the flash is instructed NOT to be the primary source of illumination, and clearly you don't have enough without flash. So that's definitely not the place to be starting.

2) You're in P mode. The P mode doesn't capitalize on fast lenses when flash is involved. As near as I can tell, it never opens up the aperture past about f/4.5 if flash is enabled, even if it's dungeon-dark. I don't know why. It's one reason you got an aperture of f/7.1. Without flash, P is a lot more flexible and forgiving; it will definitely use f/2.8 or f/1.4 when available if the flash is not enabled.

3) You were bouncing off some sort of inappropriate surface. It's obvious in the image above that you're using bounce, since there are no direct flash shadows (excellent!) but you have to get the light to the subject. You say that the ceiling was dark, neither of which are good ways to bounce light.

4) These errors compound. You were using an inappropriate bounce surface, combined with a lens that was stopped down considerably, so the light and aperture are not working towards making a good exposure. That's the reason that the -EV indicator on the flash was blinking - it was telling you that the frame was underexposed. If it blinks -2EV, that means that it thinks that things were two stops underexposed. You were so short of light that you were underexposing even though you were in TTL-BL mode, and it thought that you didn't want that much light!

> a simple point and shoot camera would have taken better shots

Yes, that's true in this case. The P&S wouldn't have been bouncing the flash, so you wouldn't have lost a lot of output. It doesn't have a TTL-BL mode, so it wouldn't have lost that output, either. It will probably open its lens up as far as possible. So probably it really would have made a better exposure. But I'll observe two things: (1) the flash would have been direct and the shadows harsh, so it would have looked like a snapshot, and (2) (sorry) most of the problems were photographer errors, not camera problems.

> To me it seems like the camera and the flash could not work out what settings were required

To be frank, that's because you presented it with a problem that does not solve. In exactly the same situation, I would have used TTL flash, aperture preferred exposure, an aperture closer to f/4, tried to bounce the flash a little differently, and then maybe also turned up the ISO higher. (The noise would be less than you ended up with, since I wouldn't have to boost the image in post processing, as you clearly did - the D300 is not this noisy at ISO 800.) Since f/4 has less DOF than f/7.1, I might have moved a little bit left and turned a little bit right, to get most of the kids into less DOF. (It would have also eliminated the lady standing with her back to you; she probably is not glad that you captured her in this position!) Only if there really isn't enough light to do this would I resort to the diffuser, which will create more of a point source of light that tends to make more and harsher shadows than the large apparent source from a bounce.

> I think one of the main problems is that the underexposure did not show up in the camera when viewing.

In fact it did: the histogram clearly would have shown the the exposure was bunched to the left.

> I also have ... a SB-800 which I would like to be able to use with the SB-900. Is there any easy reading regarding using two flashes together?

Russ' blog is a good place to start, as is Michael Hagen's book on the Nikon CLS system. But my advice is to learn to use one flash first, before moving on to trying multiples. The scenario above demonstrates a number of user errors, and until you've worked out how to avoid those, you will have a really tough time getting multiple flashes to come out consistently well.

_____
Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

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Brian thanks for your very informative reply....I'll re-read it a couple of times to make sure it sinks in. YES...I admit it was the nut behind the wheel that did not recognise warning signs in the camera and flas
I must also go through the learning curve re analising the histogram in the camera immediately after a shot.
You say that the E/V light was flashing in the flash. what I saw was the flashing E/V in THE camera before the shot. I have not in the past looked at the flash unit after a shot for any warning signs.
What I intend to do is to take Russ's advice and shoot in manual for indoor shots next time with speed 1/80, f4, ISO 400 and TTL. Also the 24-70 2.8 gives me a bit more scope to widen the lens from f7.1 if needed. With the extremely bad bouncing surfaces in that house I wonder if my Gary Wong diffuser would have done a better job, providing I shot in TTL rather than TTL-BL?
The occasion was for a friend of my wifes who had all of her family and Grand children from all around Australia for a once in two year Christmas reunion.I took 65 shots of the families knowing that to get eight childrens attention at once is very hard, so hence the rear end of one of the Moms who must have jumped into the shot.
Can I ask one more question....for outdoor fill light in bright sunlight how much do those indoor manual settings change?
thanks again for all your answers
Robin

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>Brian thanks for your very informative reply....I'll re-read
>it a couple of times to make sure it sinks in. YES...I admit
>it was the nut behind the wheel that did not recognise warning
>signs in the camera and flas
>I must also go through the learning curve re analising the
>histogram in the camera immediately after a shot.
>You say that the E/V light was flashing in the flash. what I
>saw was the flashing E/V in THE camera before the shot. I
>have not in the past looked at the flash unit after a shot for
>any warning signs.
>What I intend to do is to take Russ's advice and shoot in
>manual for indoor shots next time with speed 1/80, f4, ISO 400
>and TTL. Also the 24-70 2.8 gives me a bit more scope to widen
>the lens from f7.1 if needed. With the extremely bad bouncing
>surfaces in that house I wonder if my Gary Wong diffuser would
>have done a better job, providing I shot in TTL rather than
>TTL-BL?

I use my Gary Fong in the situation you descibed all the time. It throws enough direct light forward that the bounce is not absolutely necessary. Keep the inverted dome on it in that situation, so it will send more light forward and less into the ceiling.

>Can I ask one more question....for outdoor fill light in
>bright sunlight how much do those indoor manual settings
>change?

Outdoors in bright ambient it is totally different. Then, your flash will not be primary; it will only be adding fill. So, you have to expose the scene properly first and then allow the flash to add a little to lift the shadows. You also have to watch out for the shutter running into the maximum shutter sync speed, so don't use camera A mode when shooting fill.

The best settings to use when you are learning about fill are: camera P mode, ISO 200, and TTL-BL mode.

This will make the camera pick a suitable aperture and shutter speed to expose the ambient properly while the TTL-BL flash will add just the right amount of fill to match the ambient.

You can also use camera S mode and choose a shutter speed and let the camera pick the Aperture. Again, the TTL-BL flash will add just the right amount of fill.

But watch out for direct sunlight hitting your subjects. Don't ever add fill if that is happening. It will blow out any areas the sun is hitting. When I have this situation, I try to move my subjects into the shade or turn the flash way down - like -2.0 ev. Sometimes I just turn it off when I can't avoid direct sun on the subjects.

Russ
Nikonian Team Member
Russell MacDonald Photography
Nikon CLS Practical Guide

Thanks Russ for the extra info.I would like to attend some of the Nikon classes in your country but living down under (Australia) it's not possible. I have just joined the Australian photographic society only last month, http://www.a-p-s.org.au/ They have 6 day annual conventions with expert speakers and classes. So I'm looking forwood to that
Thanks again
Robin

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Last thing...the one and only photo that is in my photo gallery is of a bee taken from about 40 feet away using my 70-200 2.8 and the TC-17E11. The focal length was 340. With some cropping in capture NX 2 the bee still does not look that bad...so in my opinion the 70-200 and the TC-17E11 work well
Robin

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> You say that the E/V light was flashing in the flash.

Yep, given the result seen here, it's quite apparent that the flash ran out of power - so it would have shown a -EV on the flash. If it has disappeared (it turns off after a few seconds) there's a button that will bring it back, all the way until you fire the flash again. (Maybe it loses track if you turn it off, too.)

> Also the 24-70 2.8 gives me a bit more scope to widen the lens from f7.1 if needed.

But only if you're not in P mode. In P mode, with the flash enabled, it won't open up past about f/4.5, even though it's a fast lens. If you're shooting in any of the other modes, it'll go all the way wide open even with flash.

> With the extremely bad bouncing surfaces in that house I wonder if my Gary Wong diffuser would have done a better job, providing I shot in TTL rather than TTL-BL?

Very possibly, although I think that the fact that you got an output such as the above means that a D300 would probably have gotten the shot without resorting to a direct flash. It might have taken ISO 3200, but it would have worked. And clearly a flash with a diffuser is a different alternative; in this situation I might well have tried both.

> for outdoor fill light in bright sunlight how much do those indoor manual settings change?

As Russ said, almost completely. Very different situation, very different solution.

_____
Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

My gallery is online. Comments and critique welcomed any time!

>> You say that the E/V light was flashing in the flash.
>
>Yep, given the result seen here, it's quite apparent that the
>flash ran out of power - so it would have shown a -EV on the
>flash. If it has disappeared (it turns off after a few
>seconds) there's a button that will bring it back, all the way
>until you fire the flash again. (Maybe it loses track if you
>turn it off, too.)

Pressing function button 2 on the SB-900 recalls display of underexposure value in TTL Mode. You will find this on page C-17 or D-4 of your Nikon SB-900 manual.

Cheryl

Thanks Cheryl I'll put that method to check under or over exposure in my memory bank....I'll master this SB-900 beast if it's the last thing I do
Have a happy new year
Robin

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I have been practicing the indoor manual mode of IS O400 1/80 speed and f4 but after each shot I noticed that the aperture changed without touching the dial? I thought at first I was accidentially moving the dial but trying again and watching the aperture in the camera it would go from 1/80 to 1/100 then to 1/125 and then back to 1/80. have I got some sort of auto bracketing enabled?
thanks
Robin

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> after each shot I noticed that the aperture changed without touching the dial? I thought at first I was accidentially moving the dial but trying again and watching the aperture in the camera it would go from 1/80 to 1/100 then to 1/125 and then back to 1/80.

Aperture or shutter speed?

> have I got some sort of auto bracketing enabled?

Do you have BKT showing on the top right LCD panel? It sure sounds like it.

_____
Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

My gallery is online. Comments and critique welcomed any time!

Brian I cannot see BKT in the LCD panel. I thought I turned of the auto bracketing in the camera but now it goes from the start speed I selected speed1/80 to 1/100, 1/60 then back to speed 1/80 and continues that circle?
This circle of exposures might explain the different quality of shots takenI have noticed
Is this adjustment done in the flash or camera?
Thanks
Robin

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>Brian I cannot see BKT in the LCD panel. I thought I turned
>of the auto bracketing in the camera but now it goes from the
>start speed I selected speed1/80 to 1/100, 1/60 then back to
>speed 1/80 and continues that circle?
>This circle of exposures might explain the different quality
>of shots takenI have noticed
>Is this adjustment done in the flash or camera?
>Thanks
>Robin

Robin,

Bracketing is selected in the camera. Look at the top LCD in the camera for the initials 'BKT' near the lower center right. If it is there, then you have bracketing enabled.

To see exactly what you have enabled, push the Function button and look at the top LCD on the camera. You will see something like 2F or 3F (meaning a 2 or 3 Frame Bracket sequence is enabled).

Russ
Nikonian Team Member
Russell MacDonald Photography
Nikon CLS Practical Guide

Perhaps the D300 display works differently than I thought, but the shutter speed behavior is 100% consistent with being in aperture priority (or perhaps P) and with 3-frame bracket selected with 1/3 stop increments.

I think that BKT would be on the top LCD, just a bit to the left of the frame counter.

> This circle of exposures might explain the different quality of shots takenI have noticed

Yes, it very well might

> Is this adjustment done in the flash or camera?

On the camera.

Bracketing control is not very intuitive, although it's easy enough once you know how it works. I'd advise doing bracketing only with the manual handy until you're very comfortable with the controls!

_____
Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

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Yes, pushing the function button I see 3f and .3. I'll go into the settings and see if I can disable it.
thanks
Robin

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I found in the D300 manual page 122 the way to stop the auto bracketing is with the function button depressed then rotate the main command dial until 0F is displayed. I now have 0F displayed and the .3 seems only to be changed with the sub command button to .3, .7 or 1.0 which I assume is the white balance setting which only seems to to work if the bracketing mode is selected.
I think I am getting there...slowly
Robin

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>I now have 0F
>displayed and the .3 seems only to be changed with the sub
>command button to .3, .7 or 1.0 which I assume is the white
>balance setting which only seems to to work if the bracketing
>mode is selected.
>I think I am getting there...slowly

Hi Robin! Glad you're seeing light (pun intended). The .3, .7 or 1.0 that you see are I suppose the amount of compensation for the Auto Bracketing: the first number is the number of shots the camera is required to take in a given bracketing sequence, either around, below or above the "normal" calculated value: if the camera displays "-3F", it will take three pictures at -2.0EV, -1.0EV and 0.0EV from the "normal" value as calculated by the cam. At 0F, it will not bracket, whatever value is showing for the second number, as you correctly stated.
But it is not the White Balance setting, which has nothing to do with bracketing. WB settings are modified by pressing the WB key on the left of the camera and rotating the main dial and shows as small symbols on the top LCD panel. Some are adjustable via the sub-command dial. When shooting flash, leave it on Auto, especially if in TTL mode since the flash is the main source of light. And when shooting .nef, you can adjust in post-production (in .jpg too, but it's harder and leaves traces in terms of noise and information loss), so I usually never bother to set it and leave it on Auto (a tiny A on the LCD panel). As an aside, there is a way to bracket on the white balance, via item e5 in the menu. The camera will then, if working in JPG, record as many images as you state in the bracketing menu, with WB variations, but it will fire only once!

Hope this helps!

Olivier Rychner
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