Creative zone options' relation to flash operation

[photomd]

Dear friends:

 

I have a Rebel 2000 and a Sunpak PZ4000AF mounted on a Strobo camera

flip bracket. As you may know, the creative zone offers five modes -

A-DEP, M, Av, Tv and P. I noticed that, when the flash is on, A-DEP

and P set the camera on 1/90 and largest available shutter. Exposure

compensation only change the pointer location against the exposure

meter but not the f/stop or the time. In M mode I can set everything

manually. While in Av and Tv modes, the f/stop will be set to the

largest available.

I have two questions.

1- Which mode utilizes the flash as fill in and which does make it

the main source of light?

2- How can I darken the background? is there a certain distance the

background should be at to be darkened?

 

Thank you

[al_kaplan1]

Leave EVERYTHING on manual including the flash AND the camera. If you expose properly for your subject the background will be underexposed and dark. I'm assuming, of course, that you're taking pictures inside, or outdoors at night.

[jimstrutz]

Al responds with basically the same thing to anyone who posts a question about an automatic camera. I don't think he likes them. :) Actually it pretty good advice as working in manual mode will teach you a lot, and when shooting with flash, it really doesn't slow you down that much. Although I never liked shooting with the flash on manual unless I could take my time.

 

Anyway, to answer your questions:

 

1) Flash will provide a full exposure in any of Canon's creative modes until the ambient lighting gets above EV10 (1/30 @ f/5.6). The it gradually reduces power a stop or two as the lighting brightens to about EV13 (1/60 @ f/11). So with most daylight conditions it is a fill flash, but with most indoor situations it is full flash.

 

With flash, if you use P mode you will get either 1/60 or 1/90 and a full open aperture unless you have a fast aperture lens, very fast film, or fairly bright conditions. But the shutter speed will not change from 1/60 to 1/90. Indoors, this will generally give dark backgrounds.

 

If you use Av, the shutter speed will drop as low as it takes to give a proper ambient exposure, with a full dose of flash on top of that. This will generally make your backgrounds properly exposed and your subjects exposed by the flash. You will often need a tripod since the shutter will be slow.

 

2) With flash, I prefer to put the camera in manual mode. Then you can set the aperture to whatever you want and vary the shutter slow enough to pick up some ambient lighting for the background or fast enough to make the background dark.

 

 

For more info, check out http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/