Little Problem

Merry Christmas to all. I am using a Nikon 70s with the SB-800. I normaly

shoot in "A" mode but I wanted to use "S" mode to contol the flash lighting

better, when I did this I had control of the shutter speed but the aperture

would not change, it went to the widest aperture 3.5 and stayed there. The

secondary wheel would not change the aperture. What am I doing wrong.

John.

"S" mode is shutter priority. You can change the shutter speed and it will meeter and figure out what aperture is best automatically. IF you want to control both shutter and aperture use the "M" manual mode. Or do "P" programmable auto mode and then adjust what it auto-sets to your liking.

No offense sir, but the "little problem" is that you don't understand the reciprocal relationship b/w aperture and shutter speed. I strongly urge you to buy a book on basic photography so that you can, at least, understand this relationship.

 

In the mean time you'll get more consistant results by sticking to Automatic or Program mode. With a flash you can also use manual but be prepared to have some under exposed indoor photos with smaller (higher number) apertures.

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I normaly shoot in "A" mode but I wanted to use "S" mode to contol the flash lighting better

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Hi John. Not sure of your background, but I'll make some comments on a basic level.

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With a flash, the flash 'lighting' is largely controlled by flash duration, at least in any form of auto or ttl mode. Changing the shutter speed has little or no effect on how bright the flash appears in your final image (within the limits of flash sync, and presuming you aren't using an odd flash with very long 'burn times').

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What does change with the shutter speed is how the 'ambient' light fills in. A lot of wedding / event shooters will experiment with a slow shutter speed (say, 1/15th with a wideangle lens) with their flash in order to 'register' the background ambient exposure.

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I don't have a D70 anymore, but I bet you also were getting a little 'help' from the meter in the viewfinder. If you were in S mode and the aperture 'bottomed' at 3.5, the meter was probably trying to indicate to you how many stops underexposed your 'ambient' was.

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I think S, A, and M modes are all equally valid as you try to wrest a bit more control from the camera / flash combo. You just need to understand the relationships and what the system is trying to tell you.

Like Todd said aperture controls the ambient. I you want great results put it on P and fire away, just using this an flash comp will yeild great results, I'm not sure what you mean by better but this is about as easy and sweet as it gets. I only wish I had a 800. I use an sb 28 on my D70s, with the camera in manual, try this, set to your fastest sync speed, set your flash to manual, take a couple of test shots the film is cheap, review you shots, adust your flash power up on down to get it the flash "right" then open up your aperture say from 1/250 to 1/180 and then 1/125 and you'll notice the ambient light"comes up or gets brighter". You can really get creative this way by controling the flash and the ambient. I know this breaks all the rules and your not suppose to use a "film flash with a digital camera but hey there are no rules. Seriously though you should be getting great point and shoot shots with it in A or P

Merry Christmas

Shoot on manual mode M, then set the shutter speed and aperture to exactly what you want - the d70 and sb-800 will take care of the rest. When I had my d70, I shot at 1/500 at f8 and got perfect results most of the time, especially if the auto ISO is turned on. good luck.