Oh no... grain and blow outs at the same time?? HOW?

[mistym]

I just got back a bunch of test rolls I shot at a wedding using my

shiny new flash and my really old camera (flash is a sunpak 5000AF,

camera is a Minolta X-570). I had done a pre-test test run with my

husband and dog and found that the plain old auto-mode when I was

being honest with it was TOO much. The pictures weren't grainy, but

they were blown out.

 

So I added a stofen omni-bounce and told the flash I was one more

fstop open than I was - what I got - blown out areas where the flash

hit, and grainy grainy grainy everywhere else (400 speed film).

 

Can someone help me understand this? Was I just stupid to try to

trick the flash like that?

 

In the meantime I've ordered a lower-end Maxxum for those shots where

I must use flash in the future... in the past I had had no problems

with an older sunpak that had two modes - high, and low - always shot

on low with a lumiquest diffuser and got beautiful shots - but I was

attracted by the ability to strap on a battery pack for this flash,

which I can't do with old trusty....

[fotografz]

Post some shots, so we can see what's going on.

[Jerry_]

Minolta and a second-party flash seem to be your problem.

 

 

 

 

A suggestion: try to locate a used Nikon F100 and a SB-28 speedlight, and whatever lens you can afford. The 'flash' results will make your life worthwhile for wedding photography. (What you have now is probably not going to be a real-good thing for shooting weddings.)

 

 

 

 

 

Generally, a 'flash' is not a flash-bulb and it may take some tinkering to get the results that look like no flash was used on the final image, but indeed some flash was added to the scene.

 

 

 

Good luck!

[James G. Dainis]

Telling the flash you were one more stop open than where you were, would have the flash provide one stop less than what you needed. The more open the aperture the less light the flash is going to deliver. You lost one stop with the bounce and another stop with the flash. Your film is two stops undererexposed. How do the negatives look? Rather thin I would imagine. Judge the results that you get by the negative not by how the photos came out as a result of printing.

[picturesque]

Grainy, grayish photos usually mean underexposure. The blown out effect could be the kind of printing you got. Was it from a pro lab or your local drugstore? Sounds like you judged the blown out effect to be overexposure, when it might not be, and consequently underexposed your film. Were your old, "nice" photos processed and printed by the same lab? Every flash is different and you have to do testing, preferably on slide film so there is no printing variable, to find out how well it works with your camera.

[mistym]

Thank you guys. The pictures STINK on top of being poorly exposed so I don't want to post one!

 

And having gone thru the whole set now I think everyone is right (man I really hate that they don't show all the responses when you are responding so you have to memorize who said what... anyhow...) - because I bracketed and the shots where the aperature was the same as what I told the flash it was came out alright, it's just the ones where I tried to be too clever for myself that are really really bad. And also in a few cases I was using a wider angle than the flash could handle.

 

And of course this all only applies to the shots I shot indoors in the near-darkness with the flash, the ones I shot outdoors in daylight with fill-flash beforehand are fine.

 

So lesson learned:

 

A little more testing needed without the drastic measures of trickiness I tried.

 

And I have a hunch the flash will do much better in general with the elcheapo maxxum 5 I ordered (it's a minolta dedicated sunpak, all my flashes are sunpaks so I don't think it's the third party flash thing, either way it takes a bit of a brain and a little experience to get the two to work together since the camera isn't ever going to talk to it, it's just that none of the rest of my flashes are this darned tootin' fancy and don't require as much SKILL to use, I think...)

 

Thanks again!

[mistym]

It's a dead horse now but I thought I'd post in case anyone in the future has the same problem and googles this.

 

I got the rest of my rolls back and figured out the "real" problem, now that I can put the night in order.

 

The real problem was: the batteries died. They are serious when they say you can shoot 250 pictures with the battery pack. They don't mean 500, they mean roughly 250. I think I was probably around 500 shots when I realized the ready-light wasn't coming on... and of course the flash was still popping a little bit because the poor thing tried to do the best it could on what little juice it had... hence bright light on a shoulder or forehead here or there and otherwise underexposed shots.

 

Gotta order another power pak...