Thanks for the reply Bruce, Ok, let's see if I'm following so far. What I explained in my email about the behaviour of the camera and flash is completely normal?I'm glad for the info on the older cameras and TTL. I totally understand the flash results.
Ok, now the harder part. Ok, wide aperture, more available light in. Got it. Is that acceptable? DOF would not be good if you had say, fast film, a powerful enough flash, and a big area you wanted to capture. So at that point is it normal to set the aperture you want? From all I've heard and read, generally you don't want to hand-hold below 1/60s, should I be able to hand-hold, with confidence, a shutter speed of 1/30 with flash (as flash does freeze some motion)? I just don't know, it seems everyone finds a higher shutter-sync speed to be better, with the MZ-5n it was 1/100, considered sort of bad, and the MZ-S has 1/180, better, but not like some that have 1/250 or 1/500. I guess you can see I'm a little uncomfortable shooting at a low speed. And am shy when it comes to flash. I generally go a bit overboard in any situation. Or am I still missing the point about the ambient light? Brad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruce Dayton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brad Dobo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, October 27, 2002 2:13 AM Subject: Re: Ok, the most stupid question from someone who should know better (ie HELP NEEDED) > Brad, > > Just so you know, in the old days, TTL was kind of poor. The reason > was that flash synch speed was always used automatically by the > camera's program setting. This generally meant that your flash > pictures ended up with the subject well lit but the background > somewhat blacked out. In more recent years, Pentax, among others, has > changed the program so that it will try to use the slowest hand > holdable shutter speed it can based on the focal length of the lens > attached. By doing this, you let in as much ambient light as possible > and use as little flash as possible to get a properly exposed image. > The net result is that the backgrounds are not blacked out, but appear > more natural and less like a flash picture. This is a good thing. You > had to kind of manually do that on the old SuperProgram body because > it always wanted to set the camera to 1/125 even though you had a > fairly wide angle lens on that could of been held at 1/30. > > Hope this makes sense. > > > Bruce
