"Did Fire" - Did Not Fire" ??

I shot a carnival on Saturday (www.webwalkers.co.uk) the first 50 shots or so with the SB800 switched on. Unknown

to me the batteries were low but the flash appeared to be working still. However, on quite a number of shots the

exif data clearly states Flash "Did not fire" whereas looking at the shot it clearly did. If the flash fires but

not at the correct strength can this cause the 'firing' not to be registered? What actually triggers the "Did

fire" indication in the exif data? All shots were taken in the "P" mode. I'd be grateful for some answers.

Without knowing what ISO and what camera you used....my guess would be there was enough light to get a image recorded [without the SB-800 making a contribution.]

 

 

 

Had you kept your left eye open, you would have seen *no flash* at the time you trigged your shutter.....

Gerald, I used my D2x and all shots were at ISO 200. I am sorry but I don't think I explained myself very well. The shots which showed as "did not fire" on the EXIF information, clearly did fire as you can see the effect of the flash on the image. In the example you can clearly see the flash reflected in the her sunglasses but the EXIF shows "Did not fire".<div></div>

Colin there seems to be some room for the improvement of the in camera software :-) Tell Nikon.

That's odd isn't it?

 

Presumably your D2 gives a blinking flash ready indication if power was judged insufficient so it should have let you know?

 

Why not try setting camera on manual at low ISO, 1/250 at f/22 say, turning on flash in TTL and pointing camera at something distant on a dull day. That should guarantee that flash fires but at insufficient power and you can check the EXIF data.

 

I wonder if the batteries were sufficiently low to partially disrupt communications between flash and camera but that the flash still worked.

 

Clearly your camera was pixiefied - I live down the road in Dartington!

I believe I've noticed that similar situation with my D200, that exif indicates the flash didn't fire and under the circumstances as I recall or from looking at the picture, it did. I haven't looked up either Nikon's nor the spec's detailed description of that particular data item but would agree it seems strange that that if the flash fired, it would be parsed in a way that it didn't record firing if there was some low level firing or if "it didn't really need to fire" or something like that.

i'm betting the flash was not in its ready state, it did not have enough power to provide the light the ttl flash system was requesting so shows as "did not fire". just my guess. you could probably test it out pretty quickly by taking a series of shots too fast for the flash to recycle and check the exif. the first one will probably be fine and the rest will show as not fired.