Blink

[fuzzybud]

I noticed that some people whom I take flash pictures of end up with

their eyes closed in the finished print. I have a D70 and use the on

board flash. I would say that about 95 percent have their eyes closed

in about 90 percent of the pictures I take of them. Does anyone have

any suggestions.

 

Fuzzybud

[jcuknz]

You are not the only one to experience this problem and it may be that the low powered 'focus assist flash' just prior to the main 'photo taking flash' is causing the problem.

[michael s.]

There are tips/tricks to use, but I have a different suggestion (likely not the one you want to hear): where possible, turn up the iso (if necessary), hold the camera steady or lean it/yourself on something, and turn off the flash. With a fast lens, like the 50mm f/1.8 for example, the D70 is an awfully good low light camera.

 

Personally, I much prefer the look of available light pictures of people. Give it a try.

 

I'll let those more experienced in flash photography offer suggestions on your original question. On camera flash always presents some problems.

 

Good luck.

[rob_prokopy]

The issue appears to be related to the delay induced by the metering of the camera. With the D70 body, the sequence used by the TTL flash metering system is (1) fire a low-powered flash, (2) calculate the necessary flash power for proper exposure, (3) open shutter and fire flash at determined power.

 

The problem is that the processing time between 1 & 3 is just enough time for people to blink. On Nikon's professional bodies, the processing occurs faster, so this happens less often.

 

There are several ways to get around this with a D70. First, you can set you "AE-L/AF-L" button to be the "flash exposure lock". This can be done by setting custom setting #15 to "FV Lock". Now you can manually fire the metering flash by pressing the "AE-L/AF-L" button. The camera will store this measurement and will just do step #3 when you take a photo.

 

The second way is to use manual flash mode. This can be done if the photo situation is fairly static, but if you are trying to do something where you are following action, it won't work so well.

 

The third option is to use a "rear-curtain" sync on the flash and a longer exposure time. An example of this is where I shot a photo of people in front of a Christmas tree. The camera was set with an exposure time of 1 second and the flash was set for rear sync. In this specific case, the camera fired the metering flash, opened the shutter, waited about 1 second and then fired the full powered flash. The one second was plenty of time for people to blink and reopen their eyes before the photo was finished.