My Camera Seems To Need More Light (WITH CORRECT PHOTO INFO)

G'day Catm

As a newbie here - 'Welcome' to the PT forum .... collectively we'll try to offer you heaps of good advice

As to your 2 images - the dark one, the 2nd seems to have been taken very soon after the first one. I wonder whether the flash in the camera had been given enough time to fully reset itself before the shutter button was pressed

On my camera the flash symbol shows red for about 4 or 5 seconds between photos and during that time it does not have enough 'grunt' to do a decent photo

Hope this helps
Phil from the great land Downunder
www.flickr.com/photos/ozzie_traveller/sets/

Just because it went off doesn't mean the flash had enough time to recharge. The sequential shots would have the flash firing at less power than required for a proper exposure. The problem with exposure being different when not using flash would need examples with EXIF to begin troubleshooting.

G'day catm

Okay let's go back to basics ... esp if those flash images were taken "months ago"

1) does this "faulty" exposure only happen with flash? or daylight as well?
2) does it happen with more than one lens? .... ie: is the camera body playing up -or- a lens playing up?

Phil from the great land Downunder
www.flickr.com/photos/ozzie_traveller/sets/

G'day cat

Okay - several things here
It seems that (maybe) the camera is playing up a bit ...

With the camera on Auto - shoot a dozen or so pics around the house ~ do these seem exposed okay?
If -yes- the problem may be with the flash operation - more testing needed
if -no- are they ALL the same darkness then the light meter inside the camera seems faulty.
solution-1 - set the exposure +/- button to "+1EV" and see how it goes

if -no- and some are okay and some are light and some are dark, it could be that the shutter is damaged and not working properly.
solution-2 if this is so, it's cheaper to find another camera

Give this a go and come back with your results

Phil from the great land Downunder
www.flickr.com/photos/ozzie_traveller/sets/

Shadowfixer1 wrote: Just because it went off doesn't mean the flash had enough time to recharge. The sequential shots would have the flash firing at less power than required for a proper exposure. The problem with exposure being different when not using flash would need examples with EXIF to begin troubleshooting.

This, the flash didn't go off on the other ones.

Shadowfixer1 wrote: Just because it went off doesn't mean the flash had enough time to recharge. The sequential shots would have the flash firing at less power than required for a proper exposure. The problem with exposure being different when not using flash would need examples with EXIF to begin troubleshooting.

This, the flash didn't go off on the other ones.

Scotty wrote: This, the flash didn't go off on the other ones.

Hey Scotty .....
I think you've missed something along the way
the flash "DID" fire in the dark pics - look for the reflection off the rear panels - but it seems to be considerably under-exposed leading to our presumptions that it had not been given enough time to regenerate full flash power.

Cat-
using repeat flashes is always okay but every camera needs an extra 2-3-4 seconds after the first flash to regenerate itself to full power.  Because the camera =and= the flash share the same battery, this takes extra time

It is why you see the wedding & press photographers with external flashguns with their own batteries, so that they can easily shoot extra pics quickly

Phil

Ozzie_Traveller wrote:

Scotty wrote: This, the flash didn't go off on the other ones.

Hey Scotty .....
I think you've missed something along the way
the flash "DID" fire in the dark pics - look for the reflection off the rear panels - but it seems to be considerably under-exposed leading to our presumptions that it had not been given enough time to regenerate full flash power.

Cat-
using repeat flashes is always okay but every camera needs an extra 2-3-4 seconds after the first flash to regenerate itself to full power.  Because the camera =and= the flash share the same battery, this takes extra time

It is why you see the wedding & press photographers with external flashguns with their own batteries, so that they can easily shoot extra pics quickly

Phil

The exif data shows it fired, but due to slow recharge rate on pop-up flashes and hot shoe flashes, it didn’t actually go off is what I meant to say.

Just because it goes off, doesn't mean it had built up the required power for the exposure. If you were shooting a burst and hadn't manually adjusted the the flash power to be lower, then I can almost guarantee the flash hadn't recycled to 100% power. When shooting flash, wait until the "flash ready" symbol lights up before firing. You will need to look this up for your model of camera as each differs on how they signal that the flash is ready to fire.

catm0387 wrote: It is an external flash with it's own battery supply that was put in brand new that morning.

G'day cat

Okay - more info ... more chance of giving you a better answer 

Presuming that the camera is working okay in daylight .... then it comes back to the flash operation.  And knowing it is an external flash helps as well

Okay - without the flash on the camera !!!!!
1) turn the power 'on' and listen to the unit as it charges up ready for use.  It will take from 3 to 6 seconds depending on the electronics inside the unit =and= the age of the batteries
2) when the 'ready' light on the back comes on, press the 'test' button to fire the flash
3) it will then recharge itself - you will hear the electronic whine as it happens
4) when the 'ready' light on the back comes on, press the 'test' button to fire the flash

5) count the number of seconds for the unit to recharge until the 'ready' light comes on
This is the minimum time that you can wait between taking photos

6) as the batteries get used up, this recharge time will become longer and longer until it just will never get to the ready light coming 'on'

Hope this helps
Phil

The way I see it…

— the flash did not have the time to recycle or
— the TTL meter was fooled by its own reflection in the BG or
— both.

G'day cat

good to hear from you again

btw - as the whine comes to a stop, the test / pilot light (usually) comes 'on' to also show that the flash is fully charger "and rarin' to go"

30 seconds is a v-e-r-y ... l-o-n-g time > my units take 8 seconds and sometimes that is too long as well!

With the camera if you think that it may have a problem -- set it to 'auto' mode and shoot off a dozen or so pics out in sunshine and see how they turn out

Hope this helps
Phil from the great land Downunder
www.flickr.com/photos/ozzie_traveller/sets/

As to your 2 images - the dark one, the 2nd seems to have been taken very soon after the first one.

There must be a 3-second gap between taking two pictures while using flash. I think you have taken both pictures in one go due to which flash is not fully reset. Remember, every camera needs a few seconds after the first flash.

Naheed wrote: There must be a 3-second gap between taking two pictures while using flash. I think you have taken both pictures in one go due to which flash is not fully reset. Remember, every camera needs a few seconds after the first flash.

You can't say a definitive time like 3 seconds between shots. It depends on battery power and the ability of the flash being used to recharge.