Maxxum 7D Exposure Problems

Hello everyone. I've been shooting a Maxxum 7 film for 3 years now

and absolutely love that camera. That's why I was so excited to be

able to get the 7D this Christmas.

 

So here I am playing with it and am having some trouble with flash

and overexposure. I've read the manual twice and googled this with

no luck.

 

The camera doesn't seem to meter properly with the flash raised or

an accessory flash in the shoe. In Manual, adjusting shutter and

aperture has no effect on the meter reading the camera is giving

me. It always reads dead on at 0, no matter what my settings are.

Same seems true for Aperture Priortiy as well. The shutter speed

never changes as I cycle apertures from 1.7 to 25. So as I go

through apertures, some pics are underexposed, some just right, and

some overexposed but the camera's meter never changes.

 

I've tried this with both the built in flash and a 3600HS D with the

same result. I've tried it with a Minolta 50mm and a Minolta 28-85

with the same result. Exposure and Flash Compensation are both at

0. Flash Mode is set to Fill-Flash and ADI. This is my first DSLR

so maybe I'm doing something wrong...Any help would be greatly

appreciated...Thanks in advance for your help.

There is a know bug on 7D using flash and manual mode; the metering is not active and the only workaround is to use AEL button to get metering reading.

I suggest that you ask the question in KM DSLR forum at www.dpreview.com

 

There have been a lot of discussions on flash exposure problems. Some of them have easy work arounds -- for example set flash metering on TTL preflash instead of ADI if you are not using a D lens. The early 7D's didn't switch automatically. (That was a problem with the early cameras, but I believe the firmware update fixed that).

 

As was mentioned, the meter on the 7D does not show the exposure in manual mode when using flash. I don't know if they ever fixed that. They did fix it on the 5D.

 

Tom

Turn off the flash for the meter display to work. Only from the mind of Minolta.

It's working as designed. In M mode, the flash still will try to expose your frame correctly. That's why the metering indicator is at 0. You will only get incorrect exposure if your manual settings cause too much exposure from ambient light, or when the flash range is insufficient for the given aperture and ISO setting.

<p>

In A mode the exposure time will vary between 1/60 and x-sync speed, depending on aperture and ambient light. If you only ever saw 1/60, it was too dark.

<p>

A final hint: when you use a non-D lens, turn off ADI. This should be done automatically, but obviously doesn't work with some lenses and the 7D (for whatever reason).

In manual mode meter SHOULD be active to give us a feedback (there is no reason why should metering mode be disabled).

There were a lot of discussions about this issue, and users are divided about this thing, but IMHO, it was a mistake (I'm not sure if this was intended to work this way or it's a fault).

Fortunately this is fixed on 5D and i believe, KM will do the same in future cameras.

One 7D user has reported that after his 7D was repaired (for other problems) metering was active. On his 7D entire motherboard was changed, so it may be a hardware fault, but I'm not sure.