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Has anybody ever tried this combination? I'm just curious why this cheap-o flash seems to work just fine with my

F100 but when mounted on my D200 just blasts away at full power every time. There doesn't seem to be much info

out there on this flash. The sync voltage is safe for digitals, but the logic doesn't seem to work. I thought my D200

would be reverse compatable with anything that worked on My F100 but this doesn't seem to be the case with this

aftermarket flash. I have an SB 800 but don't like how the thing flops around on my flash bracket. I thought I'd give

the Promaster a try because it screws down nice and tight but unless I want to go fully manual it's not going to work

for me. I'd love to hear anybody's thoughts.

The old Canon FD glass is pretty much incompatable with modern digital cameras. If you want to get a lot of people worked up into a tizzy go over into the FD forum and ask how you make the current lens you have on your T70 work on a new Canon Digital EOS. If you want to stick with the Canon FD system for awhile a recently CLA's F1 would be a hard choice to beat, althought I'm a pretty big fan of my Canon A-1 as well. Any of the Canon FD cameras with a manual winding lever will be quiet compared to the T-Series cameras. A modern film SLR Nikon or Canon will be much quieter. If you're looking at staying in film & want to upgrade into a modern forward compatable system I'd suggest looking at a Nikon F100 and a 50mm f1.4 lens to start with. Then you can build your system from there. You can get film bodies pretty cheap anymore, but good modern lenses are still expensive, that's where you'll end up spending your money. Or if you have some money to burn and want to jump into Digital with both feet check out a Nikon D-90. My girlfriend just got one and it's a great camera. Quiet, compact, and with awesome low light performance.

Taking apart broken cameras is always fun! I have a whole sack of mutilated 'as is ebay' Canon FD cameras that I've taken apart....never been able to get one back together though. The biggest problem I run into when taking apart something I shouldn't? Stripped screws. I'm not sure where to get a proper precision screwdriver set but the one I have doesn't cut it. The heads on those itty bitty screws won't take much abuse. Then after I strip one out of course the only logical thing to do is get out the drill.... hence the sack o' cameras.

Oddly I have that very same combination of cameras. The Kodak Flash-Bantam takes a screwball roll film size that is no longer made 828, you can buy it online for about $10 a roll or if you really want to shoot the thing you can jurry rig 135 (35mm) film to work with some 120 backing paper, some tape, and a pair of scissors. Personall I'd concentrate my efforts on the Yashica Mat as that takes a standard 120 roll film which you can buy at any camera store and still get developed. Like the poster above I have the 120G model, which I sent in recently to have a CLA done. Like the poster above the shutter had to be rebuilt. The camera does have a meter, but it takes an obsolete Mercury button cell battery that is pretty hard to find. A company called Wein makes something called the air-cell which will deliver the necessary 1.35 volts but these batteries are short lived. The Yashica Mat is a good camera to learn the fundamentals of exposure on as you have to manually set both aperature and shutter speed.

If there's a low ceiling try bouncing the flash off that to give more even soft lighting. When I'm shooting candids at a

wedding reception in a dark banquet hall I usually shoot in shutter priority at a fairly slow shudder speed like 1/40th

of a second and then crank the ISO up as high as it will go without getting too much noise. With my D200 I get

acceptable results at ISO 1000 and will sometimes go as high as ISO 1600. If the space is dark enough, the flash

burst will freeze the subject and the high ISO and longer shutter lets the ambient light register on the sensor. At

these settings with people dancing there will probably be some ghosting, setting your camera for rear curtain flash

sync will make the blurred trails of dancers look more natural, flowing behind them instead of shooting off ahead of

them. Whenever you can, avoid blasting your subjects with a direct hit from your strobe, bounce it off a wall, a

ceiling, an index card, anything to give some dimension to your subject. A straight on flash blast will rarely result in

an inspiring image. You might also want to try playing around with your camera in manual everything mode, adjust

aperature size to control the flash effect and shutter speed for the ambient light.

Jaki,

 

It sounds like you understand the premise of ISO as it applies to both film and digital. The higher the IS0 is the less light

you need to get a properly exposed image. The choice of film speed really depends on what you're desired outcome is

and is a blend of compromises that include Fill light (flashes) ambient light, shuttter speed, and aperature. Some really

broad generalizations:

 

ISO 200 - Outside sunny day or in a studio where all lighting conditions can be completely controlled.

 

ISO 400 - Outside Overcast, Sunrise Sunset, Indoors - some ambient lighting.

 

ISO 800 - Outside Dusk, Indoors available light (if well lit) better balance of fill and available light.

 

Chrome Colour - Slide film or transparency film. When developed, a print film produces a negative with all those funky

colors (green faces, etc). Chrome films reproduce accurate colors right on the film itself when developed. You can hold

a Chrome 'negative' up to the light and the reds look red, blues look blue, yellows yellow etc etc.

Peter: I hate admitting it but I think my cameras usually ARE smarter than me, I swear every time I try to outsmart matrix metering it never turns out how I expected. Maybe I should revert to center weighted so I can feels marter than the camera again.

I like the idea of just ordering the part and making the replacement myself. I'll have to wait until my girlfriend get's back to see what the overall damage is. The camera was actually in a LowePro Slingshot Camera Bag that was then inside another backpack but that's probably besides the point, it fell long enough and hard enough to break the lens off the camera like a twig. I kind of wonder if the VR mechamism might be loused up too, it seems like that would be a pretty sensitive component. I personally have a D200 I need to send in to Nikon for some work....because of a drop. The two of us must be the worst butterfungers on the planet. My D200 seems to work just fine after dropping it with two irritating exceptions, the display in the viewfinder moved into a funky angle that makes it hard to read, and the switch that tells the camera when the built in flash is deployed has gotten really finicky. Maybe I'll send my girlfriend's D90 along for the ride if anything looks even remotely out of place.

 

Maybe how I'll convince my girlfriend to proceed is to buy the part and make that quick fix and then have her put the savings towards a nice fast zoom or prime...but as long as it works she probably won't care. I think she's really happy with her little kit as it is and isn't a camera dork like me who is constantly lusting after faster glass.

 

I'm hoping that Elliot is right that the plastic mount acted as a fail-safe, breaking off instead of doing a lot more damage to the actual camera.

I guess I can rule out a defective lens mount, my girlfriend suddenly remembered that her backpack that had the camera in it took a nasty four foot fall from the hook on the back of an airport bathroom stall. Any opinions on whether I should send the lens to Nikon for service vs a local shop?

Today I got a call from a very upset girlfriend. She went on a trip to visit a friend and brought her brand new Nikon

D90 with 18-105mm VR kit lens along for the ride. When she went to take it out of the camera bag the lens was no

longer attached to the camera. At first she accused me of running off and dropping her camera...I've been officially

forbidden from playing with her D90 because she doesn't think I play nice enough with my cameras, but after

discussing it for a little bit we couldn't think of any time the camera would have been dropped or even violently jarred.

She described the problem to me over the phone as, "there's three little plastic tabs and two of them are snapped

clean off, so the lens won't stay attached to the camera. I'm really bummed." I've never paid much attention to the

mount on the back of my Nikkor lenses so I dug out the cheap-o kit lens that came with my D200 an 18-70mm DX

expecting it to be constructed the same as her newer better faster VR DX lens to see what she was talking about.

Well, there's no plastic on the mount of that lens which surprised me since I thought it would be about the same as

the D90 kit lens. It seems really strange to me that the lens mount would break so easily. I personally have a very

unlucky Tamron 24-135 zoom that has been dropped twice, once onto a hardwood floor, the lens busted in half but

the metal mount stayed securely attached (I sent it in, had it repaired, and got it back good as new), and once onto

concrete, shattering the B&W UV filter but otherwise leaving the lens unphased...well, except for the glass dust that

somehow got under the front element. So, knowing that the camera hasn't seen any abuse is there any chance

Nikon will service the lens under warrenty or will my girlfriend have to send it in and pay for a new mount? Has

anyone else had problems with the plastic lens mount flanges?

Gerald, do you think the overall overexposure is a result of all the green in the image? Would -2/3 stop compensation have been approrpriate as if I was just metering off the grass? Thanks for your reply and adjusted photo!

Bob, I like the acronyms. I really should start experimenting more with getting the flash off the camera. I've played around with it a little bit with some pet portraits and like the results but need a lot more practice to get quick consistent results. Moving the flash off to a light stand would certainly add a lot more dimensionality to my pictures. Thanks for the Info!

That is to say, TTL is good, but TTL with Balanced Fill Flash is even better.

William, Thanks for pointing out the different applications between TTL BL and TTL. The relative lighting of the subject to the background wasn't something I'd considered when selecting a flash mode, instead I was operating under the assumption that the mode with the most descriptions after it would yield the best results, or at leat the best chance of a decent exposure, when supported by the camera.

I've looked at the manual but lost the book of pictures... I'll have to see if I can find it out on the web. I don't understand what the difference between AA mode in aperature priority and TTL BL FP in aperature priority is?

I was hoping somebody could give me some help with how to get better shots straight out of the camera when using

a fill flash. I tried to take some pictures on an overcast day of a group of kids using a Nikon SB800 attached to the

hotshoe of my camera. I found that the pictures I used the flash on were much worse than those where I just relied

on the diffused ambient light through the clouds. I was hoping a little flash would help my subjects to pop out from

the background, but instead I only succeeded in washing out the colors in their clothing and making their faces ghost

light. I was shooting in matrix meetering mode, aperature priority, with a Nikkon 70-200mm VR lens opened up to

2.8. I thought my flash was on auto everything..TTL BL FP with a -1EV compensation but now that I turn it on I

noticed it was set to AA FP, and I have to admit I don't even know what this mode is. Any input about what went

wrong would be much appreciation. Thanks!<div></div>

Definitely something to be said about the price differential. I paid $20 for my 50mm f1.4 bayonet mount for my canon and over $200 for essentially the same lens for my modern Nikons. People don't ask me so much about why I'm using the gear I am, rather they tend to relate to me a story about a long lost Canon FD camera they regretably sold off or have burried in the closet or that their parents or grandparents used. Maybe seeing me out there shooting with my A-1 or AE-1 program will encourage them to dig out their forgotten cameras and take them for a walk.

Thanks for the input everyone. I guess I'll mail it into Tamron and see what kind of an estimate they give me. My girlfriend always tells me that I'm too careless with my cameras; it hurts, but I'll have to admin she's right.

Today I somehow managed to drop my Nikon D200 about three feet onto a hardwood

floor. As far as I can tell the camera still works fine, but the lens just

sort of broke off at the mount. It's a Tamron SP 24-135 1:3.5-5.6. I'm

attaching a picture of the damage. I'd appreciate any input on whether this is

something that can be repaird or if I should just start saving up my pennies

for a replacement. Thanks!

Thanks for all the ideas!

This weekend I went skiing up in Lutsen Minnesota. I took my Canon A-1 with

me to snap some photos throughout the day of the beautiful scenery and my

friends falling thier way down the slopes. I didn't have any problems with

the lens itself fogging up but I was constantly fighting fogging and

condensation on the viewfinder, which made it really hard to tell if I had

anything in focus. For the most part I just wore the camera around my neck

with the lens facing out, so I'm thinking the problem was caused by the heat

of my body and perspiration. Anyway, if anybody has any tricks to keep the

moisture and fog off the viewfinder during winter sports I'd love to hear

about them.

The cardinal with the dead fish aren't two things I would normally imagine together. Makes the picture memorable.

It doesn't drain out in the L position. Only in A.

I'll try hooking up a multimeter to further diagnose the problem. Thanks for the input.

It's my pill bottle power supply