Desperate for help.....SB800

[richard_eberhart]

hello all,

 

I am new here and I really need some help. I just picked up the sb800, brought

it home and shot some test shots. They all turned out very underexposed. The

flash fired but still grossly underexposed.

 

http://images32.fotki.com/v1063/photos/1/1034366/4248078/DSC_0196-vi.jpg

 

I took the unit back to the camera store and they tested it and determined that

it was bad so they replaced it with a new one. They attached it to a d200 and

fired off a shot to show me that it worked. Took it home to my D50, set the

camera and flash to TTL, M mode, 1/125 ss, f 5.6 and got the same result.

 

http://images32.fotki.com/v1063/photos/1/1034366/4248078/DSC_0196-vi.jpg

 

Looking through the exif it all looks normal. The only thing that looks

suspicious is the Flash Mode where it says "optional, TTL." I have read through

the manual for both the camera and the flash looking for anything that may give

me an ah-ha moment and nothing. I have shot in every mode, every flash setting,

checked to see if the flash was in commander mode. I cannot for the life of me

figure this out. Would hate to think I just spent $350 on a failed experiment.

HELP ME PLEASE!

[Matt Laur]

There's no reason that flash shouldn't server you very well on the D50 or any more recent body. Do you have exposure or flash compensation on the body turned down a stop or three?

 

Try resetting the flash to factory defaults (see the manual - it's a couple of key presses), and then putting your camera on P mode. That way you're totally in the hands of Nikon's software. See if that produces a simple, acceptable results as a starting point.

[richard_eberhart]

I did that and still the same results. then I experimented, took one shot with the flash on in P mode, TTL and it was really underexposed, took another with the same settings without flash and it was actually brighter. Huh? As I said, the flash IS firing so this makes no sense to me whatsoever.

[Matt Laur]

How is your camera set for metering. I know you're in P mode, but are you spot metering, matrix, etc? The light in the room or on your subject can make a big difference, here.

[richard_eberhart]

spot meter.

[Matt Laur]

Right, so try metering for the whole scene, instead. The metering is telling the flash to think about lighting the whole scene based on a very small part of what's going on. Also, try TTL-BL - see how that treats you.

[richard_eberhart]

I tried another test. I fired in a dark room directly into a mirror. Should this not produce something? The flash did fire. I tried it in all flash settings.

[Matt Laur]

What focus mode/priority are you on? If you're on C, using shutter-release priority, your camera may be willing to release the shutter without being ready for a proper exposure.

[Matt Laur]

Oh, and... are the contacts on your hot shoe nice and clean?

[jim mucklin]

Wow, what a challange. Let's try this. Set your camera on manual, meter the scence in your room.(make sure exposure comp is set to o).Set AF to single. Set meter to center weighted. Line up meter, push shutter. If you get a decent exposure the camera ok. Now reset your flash, turn it on hold down the mode and on button, when the screed goes dark tap mode, now hold down select this will get you in the mail menu, go over to the right box with the squiggle line and make sure it's set to off,this way if the flash is set to remote we eliminate it. Now follow your instruction to set flash to manual. Set it to 1/1 full power and fire it, you should overexpose the scene, now dial it down to 1/8 and try another frame, if it's darker we can assume the flash is working in manual mode as it should. If not it's probably somewhere in the menus, unless it's what I did once, if the flash is not completely in the shoe, it will do this, please tell me that's the case. I have two of these and have never heard of a failure like you described.Let me know if this helped.

[richard_eberhart]

Jim,

 

I tried all of that and got the same result. I am convinced now that I have a bad hot shoe. This is the first time that I have used this particular hot shoe and I have had the camera for about 1.5 years.

[scottconners]

I had a similar problem with my D70, the cause was the camera, not sure if it was a flash that fried it (I used an older 283 at the time as well as the speedlights) or if it just failed, but I had it fixed under warranty and the fix was a mainboard replacement. The flash would fire (at least a few preflashes) but there was never any flash in the exposure. Interestingly, the Commander mode of the built in flash still worked, so it took me a while to even see the problem.

[jim mucklin]

Richard, does it expose of without anything on the shoe? If so you got it figured out. The old process of elimination, the more I thought about it when you showed a black frame and saw that you had checked everything else out I was leaning towards the camera. One more thing, is if you fire the flash off camera using the red test button and you change it from manual 1/1 to 1/32 you should see the change in the power out put( aim it towards a wall). Good luck.

[richard_eberhart]

Jim,

 

not sure I understand the question. Do you mean can I get proper exposure without the speedlight on the shoe? The answer is yes. The on-board flash works perfect as well.

[jon_de_la_cruz]

You mentioned that you are using spot metering.

 

IIRC the SB800 manual recommends to use center weighted or matrix for iTTL to work best.

 

Try setting it to matrix/center and see what you.

 

Also set the SB800 to TTL only not TTL BL, as the BL will base the flash output to match the ambient light.

 

This happens to me certains times as well as I use spot metering whenever I shoot high ISO ambient light shoots and whenever I use the flash and it wasn't exposed correctly it is usually becuase I did not change the metering method from spot to center/matrix