tashley
Subscriber Member
I have a gig on Wednesday where I cannot take my Profoto gear so I am thrown back on on-camera flash. I dug out my HVL-F43M gun and popped it onto the A7RIII for the first time. And I am confused as hell. Please bear with me, I have read the flash manual and the camera manual, and googled and searched my a** off but I am still very confused.
You can only set Auto as the flash mode when you are in P mode on the camera - and I am just not a P mode guy. I'm an A mode guy. Which means I can only set other modes, of which Fill seems best.
My gig is inside a radio studio so I expect a lot of mixed artificial light and I also expect that I'll need to shoot at around 24mm so I was planning to bounce off the ceiling but use the white card for some forward thrust. I'd also add a large Lastolite reflector or two. The trouble is, how do I set the camera up? I did a dry run and it was confusing as heck. Ideally I would set ISO to auto, aperture to something around the f5.6 or F8 area and then expect the camera to keep shutter speed at a sensible level for the focal length and then bang out as much flash as it can. However, because it sees the job as a Fill one, it goes for the slowest shutter speed it can - as if it were metering for a shot without flash - and then pumps out some weak fill flash.
Should I go for M mode and set ISO to say 800, aperture to F5.6 or 8 and shutter to 1/124th and hope the flash works out the rest?
Sorry for being daft. I really know my way around a studio lighting setup but this so called simple TTL on-camera thing is really tough!
Thanks in advance for any help....
Tim
You can only set Auto as the flash mode when you are in P mode on the camera - and I am just not a P mode guy. I'm an A mode guy. Which means I can only set other modes, of which Fill seems best.
My gig is inside a radio studio so I expect a lot of mixed artificial light and I also expect that I'll need to shoot at around 24mm so I was planning to bounce off the ceiling but use the white card for some forward thrust. I'd also add a large Lastolite reflector or two. The trouble is, how do I set the camera up? I did a dry run and it was confusing as heck. Ideally I would set ISO to auto, aperture to something around the f5.6 or F8 area and then expect the camera to keep shutter speed at a sensible level for the focal length and then bang out as much flash as it can. However, because it sees the job as a Fill one, it goes for the slowest shutter speed it can - as if it were metering for a shot without flash - and then pumps out some weak fill flash.
Should I go for M mode and set ISO to say 800, aperture to F5.6 or 8 and shutter to 1/124th and hope the flash works out the rest?
Sorry for being daft. I really know my way around a studio lighting setup but this so called simple TTL on-camera thing is really tough!
Thanks in advance for any help....
Tim
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