blurred images

My camera is a canon eos 350d and I recently purchaseda speedlite 430

ex.Almost every time I use it the images are blurred and/or weirdly coloured.

I have tried using it in different situations but get similar results. I

would be grateful fo any ideas what I am doing wrong. Thank you

Carole,

 

post an example with exif data intact, or at least describe what settings on the camera and on the flash you have been using.

 

My guess is, that you used the flash as fill flash, so that ambient light (which was used as main light) was leading the camera to a long exposure time.

 

Rainer

Read this for a ton of advice on using flash with your camera:

 

http://photonotes.org/eos-flash/

Carole, you said "almost every time". I found that as my batteries weakened on my 420ex flash, the flash would not recycle as fast as I expected. Therefore, if I tripped the shutter too soon, the flash did not fire and I got a blurred ambient light photo (off tripod). If you have standard lightbulbs in your house, the light would be yellowish. Could that be it?

 

Another thought is 2nd curtain sync?

 

But please do tell us the settings on the camera, and perhaps post a sample or two.

Carole..what mode were you using and what were the camera settings. I tend to agree with Rainer's assessment.

Rainer is almost certainly right. A quick check is to set the camera to P mode (I bet you had it in Av mode). That will ensure you have a fast shutter speed and should give you sharp shots.

 

Except for pure fill I almost always use M mode (on the camera) when shooting with flash.

Sounds like you were shooting in Av mode. Until you learn more about flash photography, shoot in progam (P) mode.

It could also be that Carole is using the scene mode: "Night Scene" which will also use slow shutter speeds in order to build the ambient light in the image.

 

Like Sheldon, I'd recommend using P mode until have a chance to better understand both how your camera works and how the external flash interacts with it.

One caveat:

 

don't have mine here, but I know on "green square" the camera will activate all focus points and pick the wrong one most of the time. Can't recall if "P" does that, but you should always check to see which focus points light up.

 

Some years ago I went to a weekend Nikon School (good value I thought), and they said if you're not that great at flash, use auto, the camera computer actually knows a lot about what to do

I was shooting in manual mode and mainly f4.0 - f5.6 so I think you have hit on some truth regarding AV. i will experiment with P as suggested and read up on flash as I would really like to use it in manual mode. Thank you all for your responses and so many of them - it's great.

In manual mode, even with the flash firing, if the shutter speed is long enough you will see some blurring. Also, when the shutter is open for a long time, you get the ambient room light which likely isn't the same temperature as the flash. The f-stop isn't the issue in this case.