Speedlite 300TL question

I recently acquired a T90 with a Speedlite 300TL. I was shooting handheld

indoors in A-TTL mode the other day (with the T90 in AV mode), and noticed

that when I set the aperture (to, say, f/8), the indicated shutter speed was

very slow. So I put the 300TL into full program mode, worried that if I'd left

it in A-TTL, the images would be blurry due to shake. The photos turned out

okay, albeit slightly overexposed (perhaps because I had the flash head

pointed diretly at my subjects). Should I have been worried about staying in A-

TTL mode? Would the shutter have fired at the slow speeds indicated in the

T90's viewfinder, or would the 300TL have somehow "compensated"? Please lend

some advice to a 300TL novice. (I have used another flash on my F-1N very

successfully.)

According to the 300TL manual, when you set the 300TL to "P" it will automatically switch the T90 to program mode and the 300TL will go to A-TTL mode.

 

Also, when you have the camera set to either shutter AE or aperture AE, and the 300TL set to A-TTL, the 300TL will override the camera's shutter setting and will limit the shutter to speeds from 1/30 to 1/250.

 

It's pretty much going to do what it needs to...

 

You can DL both the 300TL manual and the 300TL Reference (highly recommended!) at www.canonfd.com.

Use a tripod when in AV mode. In a flourescent lit room, I was using 100 ISO film

set the aperture to f22 & it took around 30 seconds for the flash & shutter to fire.

Pix came out perfectly exposed. I did have a FL filter on the lens. Never doubted the

capabilities of the 300TL after that experiment.

When you set the aperture at f/8.0 in A-TTL mode the metering values you see in the finder are that not taking into account the flash. As if you where metering without flash. Try it and you will see the same exposure for f/8.0 and the same lighting conditions. The best way to set both aperture and shutter speed is to set the lens off A setting and set manually the aperture wanted (f/8.0 in our case) and the camera to tv mode and to whatever setting bellow or equal to 1/250. This way you can control the amount of existing light that influences the picture. By using the exposure compensation you also control the flash influence.

Is the A-TTL mode just for fill-flash? ie. if it's too dark to take a photo without flash, it will still be too dark to take it *with* flash (in terms of hand-hold-ability and low shutter speeds). It will fill in shadows, but won't provide complete illumination.

 

I have a T90 and 300TL but I use the flash so infrequently I can never remember how to set it up properly - so I may be completely off the mark. Have a look here, about halfway down the page, for a good explanation:

 

<a href="http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=008lKa">www.greenspun.com</a>

A-TTL is a sort of prehistoric E-TTL2, in that the 300TL tries to evaluate the distance of the subject, and from that information chooses an aperture, and than chooses the corresponding speed to have a correct fill-in. This means that you can end up with pretty slow speeds!

To prevent slow speed, I think you simply select the P mode on the flash, which will keep speed between 1/60 and 1/250.

 

I never use A-TTL, because it is difficult to know exactly what is going to happen, and subject has to be centered in order for it to work well; I much prefer to choose the aperture and let the camera do the fill-in in simple TTL mode... or when I have the leisure to do so, I most definitely use the FEL mode.

First, congratulations on getting a T90 and a 300TL. My piece of advice would be to join the Canon T90 Yahoo group. Although there hasn't much activity there for a long time, there is a file titled "Using Your Canon 300TL Speedlite" by Alan Swartz. It does a great job of explaining the different ways to use the strobe.