| Joined: | Sun Apr 1st, 2012 |
| Location: | South Lakeland, UK |
| Posts: | 4066 |
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I have been using my D3100 to make a pictorial record of my car build.
For the most part it has been very good and has performed well, however...
I normally use 'A' mode, aperture priority, if the lighting is poor I pop the flash up to give the extra light, also to cure camera shake movement blur if I am struggling to hold the camera still.
The problem is when using the built in flash it usually grossly over exposes. I have tried a variety of tactics, reducing the aperture, reducing the ISO and covering the flash with tissue. None of these seem to work well and involve many exposures to get what I want, a quick, easy, nicely exposed image.
In exasperation one evening I tried the green emblem on the mode dial which I think is 'I' (idiot mode) The camera seems to go into a completely automatic mode and when I half press the shutter little lights flash all over the screen. Anyway this mode usually produces perfectly exposed images with rich colours, nicely exposed shadows and no blown highlights, almost an HDR type image, it even pops the flash up automatically.
Why can't I get anywhere near this using 'A' aperture priority? There does not seem to be any way of controlling or reducing the flash intensity.
I can't show examples from the car but I do have this baby pic which I retrieved from the bin, which is typical of the problem.
I can't understand why the flash does not seem to be using any form of auto exposure, nor is flash exposure compensation available. Yet I can get perfect exposures by using idiot mode? I don't remember this issue with the D200 flash, that just works.
It took about six attempts to get an acceptable pic of the baby, I think I ended up at about f32. I was concerned the baby would wake with the frequent flashes.
Attachment: Baby.jpg (Downloaded 16 times)
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Robert.