F5 and SB800 TTL fill flash

[alistair o]

Can someone please help me with this scenario:

Using F5/SB800 combo; bright sunlight; want a little fill flash;

using aperture priority on camera; TTL BL on flash; F4 aperture to

limit DOF; camera says the shutter speed is too fast (i.e. over 250

F5 sync speed).

Question: If i go ahead and shoot anyway, will the camera allow over-

exposure in this situation. If not what does it do:

- overide the aperture setting?

- allow the camera to select a higher shutter speed than 250 (which

i presume will cause a different problem?)

- fail to fire the flash (but i am pretty sure the flash is firing

in this scenario)

 

Geez, I am new to all this automation and I must say manual

everything still looks quite good sometimes!

 

any time taken to help me out on this is would be very much

appreciated.

 

Alistair

[walterh]

Alistair - besides the "complex" automation - at full sun and F4 what is the metered shutter speed for an exposure without flash? you did not give us the film speed, but it seems likely to me that you may be already beyond the 1/250s ? In this case the camera would be right to complain because you would try to fill flash an already overexposed image:-)

 

let us know if this was the problem.

cheers

walter

[Jerry_]

If you look through the speedlight instructions, you should find the area where you can adjust the output (-.3; -.7; -1.0) and if you put the F5 in 'P' mode with the speedlight in TTL mode, it may work with ISO 100 film. [...and you can use a custom function on the F5 and get a synch speed of 1/300th second.]

 

 

But, without using a ND filter, if you try to do what you described above with ISO 400 or ISO 800 film; you take your chances.

[frank uhlig]

You need to read the instruction booklet, no doubt on that (for the flash). And there you will find your solution to flash at 1/4000 f/4: fp mode. Good luck

[james_ogara1]

Alistair, if the F-5 is like the F-4 it will just go ahead and (over)expose at 1/250.

[alistair o]

Thanks for all the very useful responses. You answered my question. Looks like I will get overexposure in this scenario. What I was wanting to do was use wide aperture (to limit DOF) in bright sunlight and use fill flash to limit shadow contrast. Looks like that unless I want to use ND filter I will need to lose the shallow DOF by closing up the aperture.

 

Frank, I have read the instruction book (many times!) but will re-read it again. The FP mode that will allow me to use F4/4000 sounds just what I am after.

 

Thanks again for the time taken to respond.

 

regards

 

Alistair

[ilmilco]

Alistair,

another option is to switch to spot metering on the F5, in this case the ligth from the background and sky will not influence the metering. I use this often with D100 and SB800 with nice result.

[alistair o]

Thanks again for all the responses. Just to close this one off, I got the prints back today.

 

All this leads me to conclude the F5/SB800 combo responds to this scenario in the following way:

 

-Flash will fire but with a very very weak flash (too weak really to effectively subdue shadow contrast)

 

-Aperture will be left at the one selected (remember it is in A mode)

 

-Shutter speed will not go higher than 250 sync speed (or 300 if selected through custom menu). If it did go higher than sync speed, the image would be ruined by a flash band where the flash fires while the shutter slit travels across the face of the film.

 

-the images will suffer from overexposure and insufficient fill flash

 

-fortunately I was using negative film, and although not ideal exposures, there is sufficient lattitude in the film for them not to be ruined.

 

-Lesson learnt!

 

Thanks again regards