I've noticed some traffic on this in the archives.. My brother-in-law was ready to pitch his Elan 2E and 380EX flash due to chronic underexposure problems. Canon deemed the unit healthy. I took the camera for some testing to see what I could come up with. Here is the report I sent him after viewing the first batch of slides tonight.
Requesting comment on issues relating to underexposure with EX flashes as described below. All shots taken in direct mode, no bounce, no diffusion. Camera set to Program. No exposure compensation on flash or camera. Film was Kodak E100. Roughly a quarter of the shots were underexposed. Almost all the shots were taken at a New Year's day party, and consisted of candids of people taken around the house. A few shots were taken in days prior around our house. The striking similarity between nearly all the underexposed shots were specular highlights, mostly off of people's eyeglasses. The most underexposed shots were of people wearing glasses, and had light from the flash glinting off them. Almost every single shot of someone wearing glasses was underexposed. There were other shots of people not wearing glasses that showed a lesser degree of error, end examination under a 5x loupe detected the presence of a bright highlight off a shiny surface, sometimes even off a shiny surface of a mixing bowl, for instance. In the shots with lesser amount of exposure error, the size of the glint was much smaller, or located much off-center, than the shots of people wearing eyeglasses. The most gross error was a shot of a subject taken against a sunlit background. The camera should have exposed the background properly (which it did) and the flash should have exposed the main subject properly (which it most decidedly did not). The subject was so underexposed she looked like a silhouette. Were it not for the reflection of the flash off her glasses I would have suspected that the flash did not go off at all. My A2E with the 430EZ flash regularly nails such shots with accuracy in both the background exposure and the flash exposure, although a more accurate test would be of the exact same subject and lighting conditions. --- Regards, Joe Hewes [EMAIL PROTECTED] * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
