Hello! I have problems with my flash. Untill yesterday, when I take photos they make multiple light on exposure objects, but not anymore. Now, wheni I turn on automatically flash sometimes it not working, and sometimes just show light once, but photos then look to bright. Is someone know what is the solution for that problem. Thanks in advance.

This is a common problem. The metering and light balance are the reasons that you are having problems achieving good results with your photos.

All cameras on the auto cycle are calibrated for 18% gray. Another words a photo of all white results in 18% gray. A photo of black results in 18% gray. The camera adjusts the shutter speed and aperture to achieve an average light level of 18%. That is why photos of snow always appear gray. To compensate for this characteristic of the cameras an 18 % gray panel is held in front of the camera and than the settings are set.manually. The metering in the camera is now locked and using the same light levels objects will be in their natural level.

A second problem is the white balance. Using flash avoids some of these problems. Adjusting the camera for source lighting type will help the most. The light balance is the cause of discoloration of the objects in the photo. Usually the camera white balance can be set for auto, incandescent, fluorescent, outdoor or flash,

Use a manual setting if it is available on you camera, You need to adjust the settings until you get acceptable results. If the photo is dark add light by reducing the aperture number to a lower number allowing more light. After the aperture is open wide(lowest number) increase the exposure to longer time. With very low light levels a tripod may be necessary.. After doing this once record the numbers for next time.

That's entirely correct. 1/250th is the fastest shutter speed you can use when using flash. Many other cameras can still only use 1/60th or 1/125. It's all to do with the two curtain nature of an SLR shutter: when you release the shutter, one curtain withdraws across the frame to expose and then a second one follows behind to shut off the light source. For exposures of 1/250 or slower on your camera, the second curtain does not start to travel across until the first one has fully opened, so you have a fully open exposure frame allowing the flash to reach every part of the sensor. At faster speeds, the second curtain sets off before the first one has finished and at the highest speeds it's so close behind the first that only a narrow **** is open to the incoming light as the shutter curtains pass across the sensor. If you fire the flash at these speeds the shadow of the first or second (or both) curtains will appear on the sensor and the picture will look like a narrow horizontal band, or if using fill in flash, it will look like a bright band across the picture.

It's immaterial though as the normal exposure rules don't apply with flash: the flash duration is typically anywhere from 1/4000th to 1/50000th and in that exposure time it outputs sufficient light onto the subject to enable a photo to be captured. As the flash is the dominant light source, the ambient light captured when the shutter is open for 1/250th is insignificant unless you're making a daylight exposure and using the flash for fill in purposes.

There are some specialist SLR and flash combos which will allow the full range of shutter speeds, but they do so by firing the flash multiple times very rapidly to ensure that there is flash light present effectively continuously as the narrow exposure **** passes across the sensor.

Compact cameras have shutters which work differently and which fully expose the sensor at all shutter speeds, so in that respect they can have a far more flexible flash exposure system. Unfortunately, they ruin it by having pathetically weak built-in flashes which are only good for very short distances.

Have you tried going into the menu and finding "reset"?

It's likely that the light table is resulting in the camera shooting with a fast shutter speed to get the right exposure on the main part of your objects, but when there is a hole in the middle it throws a shadow that looks like a brown spot in your picture. Try using "fill flash" to have the camera put some extra light (from the flash) on the front of your object. You may have to put the camera in either A or S to have it work correctly, but don't worry, it should give the correct exposure in either. Put the camera in A or S (A will let you select the lens aperature, and the camera will select the right shutter speed to give the correct exposure; S will let you select the shutter speed and the camera will set the lens aperature to get the correct exposure). Then, use the button on the side to pop up the flash. You may have to try this with several different settings to get it to turn out well. Once you get one you like, write down what you did so you can use those settings again. You can also look at the properties of the file and see the settings. Hope this helps, and if not send back some details and I'll see if I can clarify!

Without seeing the image, it's difficult to pinpoint the problem. But, going on the description you've described here, my guess would be that your shutter speed is too low to record any movement sharply, or is recording movement you are making while holding the camera. Some things that you may want to review with the camera to ensure that you're shooting the images correctly:

First, if you can look at the image using a photo editing program, see if you can review the EXIF (also called metadata) file and look at the exposure. Generally, anything under 1/30th of a second will show motion blur introduced from hand-holding the camera. If the shutter speed is below this, you should consider using a higher ISO setting or opening the apperture (this equates to a lower "F" number, so "F4" allows in LESS light than "F2.8") to allow more light into the lens. Remember that doubling the ISO will allow you to make an exposure with HALF the light. The down side to this is that higher ISO settings, particularly in Point and Shoot cameras, introduce higher levels of noise.

Ensure that you are no more than 10 feet from your subject. Most on-camera flash units are much less effective beyond this distance.

If you are photographing sports/action, remember that a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second will eliminate most motion blur.

Also remember that most point and shoot digital cameras are "one chip" cameras and often have multiple tasks to perform while making an image (focus, exposure, flash, recording and writing the file are all performed at the same time...), so it's not uncommon to see delays (also called "shutter lag") in point and shoot cameras (DSLR's have multiple chips, and don't have this issue...). One way to resolve this is to depress the shutter release half way. This keeps the chip "hot" and ready to expose. Doing this with a point and shoot camera greatly increases the responsiveness to the shutter release.

Hope this helps and happy shooting!

That is most likely the TTL preflash and should not show up in your final exposure.

Try setting the flash control to manual (e2 under the Bracketing/Flash menu). That should give you only the one flash at the end.


Aaron Gum

Hello, When taking photos in low light or night time,turn the rotary dial that you use to turn on the camera all the way to the right as far as it will turn.the symbol looks like torso of person with a star above it. this is the night setting,exposure time is increased so you may have to rest camera on solid object to prevent blur.This should do the trick.
Best Regards,Russell

When the flash is activated the camera reduces its light sensitivity[In old photo terms it 'Stops Down'] to prevent 'burnout'[or over exposure] As the flash is small powered and has only a limited 'throw' only the objects illuminated by the flash will be correctly exposed. On the other hand- with no flash the camera will open the aperture wider to maximise the light available.

In very simple terms you simply didn't have enough aperture and sensor sensitivity to get the same exposure in the camera as you got with your eyes. The blurring was caused by camera movement while the shutter was open, hand held anything over about 1/15th of a second will be unusable at your shortest focal length. Night photos are hard as they require maximum aperture to let in enough light, and maximum aperture means minimum depth of field so if you are close to the subject it is hard to get all of it in focus. You can increase the ISO setting, but that introduces noise into the shot. As you noticed using flash completely destroys the interesting lighting you were trying to capture. With a proper external flash you would have got a shot as though it were daytime, with a small inbuilt flash you just forced the camera to take a short exposure with a small aperture without adding enough flash light to get the exposure, hence the black picture. As it was a static subject you could have tried a long exposure with the camera on a trpod, possibly using the self timer to start the shot so that you did not touch the camera at all. Another area to take care with is colour/white balance. Your eyes are very good at adjusting for any colour cast or hue in the illumination. You will notice that a sheet of white paper looks white to you inside under normal lights, or inside under flourescent lighting, or outside in daylight . You will find that your camera has to be preset for the colour/temperature of the illumination, to get this right you need to know the spec of the flood lights (halogen, tungsten etc) as it is unlikely the automatic white balance will get this right, being less sophisticated than the human eye/brain combination . You can of course adjust the white balance in who editing software. I hope this helps....

When you are photographing scenes with mostly light objects (for example, snow, water, and sand), the picture is usually underexposed (darker than it really is). The camera meter registers the brightness of the scene and tries to set the camera lens and aperture for an exposure based on average brightness levels (18% reflectance) causing it to underexpose, as in the following picture. When you are photographing scenes with mostly dark objects (for example, shade, shadow, and overcast skies), and very few light objects, the camera may overexpose the image, causing it to be too light. If you have a flash on your camera, you can compensate by adding "fill flash" for some extra light. If your camera has an exposure compensation adjustment, you can increase or decrease the exposure to correct for these exposure problems. Increase the number to make the image lighter, and decrease the number to make the image darker. You may want to try a series of shots with different exposure compensation adjustments to get a feel for how much difference these adjustments make.