thank you, my PayPal address: neil@neilvn.com

Neil vN

Hi there Charles … Trev and Mike have already given you solid advice here.

I wanted to add this … if you’re at 6400 ISO and 1/20th of a second at f2.8 … you’re probably already over-exposing your ambient light. If not, at those settings, your flash simply has no time to quench its output, and you will over-expose the flash. You’re simply operating the flash in a range that isn’t practical.

You don’t need to expose correctly for the ambient light when using flash, when shooting in low light situations. You want the FLASH to do the work for you.

Here’s a good place to start.
Here’s another article on blending flash with ambient light.

The way you’re using flash & ambient light there, you’re definitely NOT “pushing your flash too hard”. Quite the contrary.

Neil vN

Thank you so much for your response! I guess I am pushing my flash too hard under the circumstance I described. I think one of the hardest part of learning the flash is knowing its limits. For example knowing when the flash will not be enough and when the flash will be too much. I guess the only real way to learn for the time being is to keep shooting : )

Thanks again!
Charles

By those settings ISO 6400, f2.8 and 1/20th with flash set to no compensation, no wonder you are grossly overexposed.

I have no idea what/where you are shooting in, but those readings would light up a black cat’s bum in a coal mine during a blackout.

You would be choosing so close to full correct exposure by ambient alone, and with no compensation no wonder the flash is grossly overexposing.

With settings like those you would need to have your flash dialled way down minus.

Try an ISO of around 1600, 1/80th-100th and f2.8 and flash will take care of it.

When you said in evening with almost no light and you are still trying to zero the camera’s meter out, it just won’t look good, you need that darker background to maintain the night mood and flash on top of ambient gives a very pleasing effect and if bounced right, a good modelling effect will occur.

You need to test try some shots, keep a note from your exif data to see what works and what does not.

Trev.

Bringing my ambient down by the aperture/ISO/shutter speed combination in TTL solves the problem. This overexposure occurs mostly in the evening when there is almost no light as I try to zero out the in-camera meter by bringing my ISO way up, shutter speed way down, and opening my aperture as wide as it can go. This is because I want to register even the faintest amount of available light instead of totally illuminating my subject with 100% flash. I use my flash in TTL mode with both exposure and flash exposure compensation set to zero, and bouncing off from a wall beside me. A typical reading in such scenarios might read ISO 6400, F/2.8, and 1/20 of a second. This more often than not will yield a photo that is grossly overexposed. Readjusting my ambient settings solves the problem. My question is, is it possible to catch some of the available light without letting it totally overexpose? Dragging the shutter works fine, but sometimes I need a higher shutter speed and the only way to do that is to open up the aperture and increase the ISO.

Sorry for going through this mess. I really appreciate your help!!!

so OVEREXPOSED??? Are you shooting in Manual with 0 exposure compensation and 0 FEC?? something doesnt sound right. The next thing I would do is make the adjustments you mention, lower the ISO and adjust the shutter and aperature. Neil??

Thanks for your helpful response. Now I’m starting to understand how things fall together. I also sometimes notice that when bouncing my flash, the image gets so overexposed that no amount of FEC will fix the problem. Does this mean I will have to adjust the ambient by my shutter/aperture/ISO? This is assuming I am still shooing in TTL mode.

I am still having trouble understanding flash range. You stated that “with TTL flash, our choice of aperture, (within reason), has no effect on flash exposure. (This is also true for our choice of ISO.)” Could you expand further on what you mean by “within reason”?

Also, when you bounce a flash off the wall, how do you know what your flash is capable of without hitting its limits? How do you know the limits of your flash?

Charles