Portrait shot of brewer in Isle of Man, first shot, flash fires but strobe warning beep goes off that it's not been able to put out enough light. LCD on back shows shot massively underexposed.
I'll quickly explain here that while charging everything up for the trip, began to think about how long I've had my rechargable AAs and wondered if they had a limit on the number of charge cycles you can put them through, which may explain my getting locked into the wrong solution.
Immediately assumed it must be batteries, so change, do a test shot of a nearby wall, everything looks fine. Another shot of subject, another underexposed shot and warning beep.
Bit embarrassed now, decide perhaps I'm right about batteries not holding charge and put another fresh set of rechargeables into the flash.
Brief moment of clear thinking and I do actually think about checking settings - notice camera is still in sports mode from when I last used it at the weekend. Shutter priority, auto ISO, so everything all over the place and while I've got one half usable shot (bottom of two posted), I can even see on the LCD it's too noisy to print. Reset to "portrait" settings bank, thinking this will solve issue.
Another underexposed shot and with subject clearly losing patience, let him escape. Try again 10 minutes later against different background with another set of fresh batteries, same bad results (first of two posted). By this time he thinks I'm some fool who's been handed a camera for the first time - so I give up.
Only when I've got back into the car and have another, slightly calmer look at the camera that I realise while I've switched the camera from sports to portrait settings and from shutter priority to manual (I usually shot indoor flash shots at around f8, 1/30s) the shutter speed from the weekend shooting remained the same when I switched to manual (1/500).
Lessons learnt/relearnt:
I always used to set my camera back to a "default" setting before putting it away - which might have helped, except logically it might be best to store camera set up for quick shooting/action shots. Perhaps should start doing this again!
Also always used to do the WIFE check before shooting (WB, ISO, focus, exposure) but got a bit complacent.
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5 comments:
That made my chuckle. Good stuff.
Not heard of the "WIFE" thing, but I'll try to remember. It's common for me to forget the ISO setting (though the 5D2 is noise free up to 6400). On the Olympus it's a different matter though.
I think my worst mistake with the mode dial is for it to get bumped onto A-DEP mode and ended up with super long shutter speeds when trying to just take a 'normal' photo. I just *assumed* that it was on 'P' as I had left it.
In New York last week, I was taking photos at Times Square and another tourist saw me and approached me with his Canon 500D and asked me to take a photo of him and is partner. His camera was in 'portrait' mode and the flash kept popping up, so I shoved it onto 'A' and took the photo, as that's what I'm most comfortable with these days.
Have, in the past, been playing with bracketing and then the next day wondered what the hell was going on with nine shots in a row progressively getting more, or less, exposed.
Seriously? Completely noise free up to 6400? That's pretty impressive. The delights of full frame I'll never know...
I agree with Kev. Leaving it on a high ISO is my usual mistake. I'm trying to just do an "I" check at the very least.
I'll try to take some shots at different high ISOs for you. No promises when, but I'll get round to it.
I certainly have no issues about using ISO 3200, and it goes 3 stops faster that that, but I've not used the super high ISO modes very much.
Most of the NYC shots at night time are ISO 3200 iirc.
With it appearing everyone has suffered from some common errors, my personal top ten of school-boy errors (in no particular order) which have screwed up photo opportunities. Feel free to add any I've missed:
1. Failure to reset from high ISO I used in previous shoot
2. Forgetting to switch back from manual to auto focus
3. Activating some odd, rarely used mode and then not setting back (bracketing mainly but sometimes some exotic focusing settings)
4. Forgetting to reset odd exposure settings - long shutters, EV at silly levels etc
5. Not checking how many shots remaining on a card and either not having any spare cards with you, or being forced to change cards at a vital moment
6. Leaving flash in remote mode while mounted on camera, or onboard flash in commander mode
7. Forgetting to turn off VR while using a tripod
8. Unknowingly activating focus lock and then spending a good five minutes wondering why I can't select focus points
9. Doesn't really screw up photos, but annoys other people - picking up the camera in such a way that my finger accidentally presses the modelling flash button, subjecting everyone to an epilepsy inducing series of strobe flashes
10. Again, more annoying than photo-spoiling, but trying to adjust A or S with the thumb wheels while the screen is still showing the last picture taken...so instead of adjusting A or S, I'm actually changing the display options
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