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Old 27-11-2009, 04:15 PM
Dennis
Dazzled by the Cosmos.

Dennis is offline
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 11,822
Quote:
Originally Posted by Octane View Post
May I suggest altering the flash metering from evaluative to average, if the 40D allows you to set that? It might help you with harsh lighting conditions. I can't remember off the top of my head, ..............>snip
Regards,
Humayun
Thanks for the suggestions H – much appreciated.

On a general note, I think that at the core of my dilemma, my Manual settings of 1/250 at F11 grossly under exposes the daylight scene. When I set the Mode to P for Program AE, the 40D chooses something like 1/60 at F4. This is all at ISO 100.

This suggests that I’m under exposing the overall scene by some 4-5 stops and so the flash output attempts to compensate giving the unnatural look, despite my efforts to claw this back in CS4.

I selected 1/250 sec as this is my max flash sync speed and minimizes camera shake and F11 was chosen to provide optimum depth of focus.

I ran a series of ISO tests comparing ISO 100 and ISO 400 using a Rates Bill as a target and I noticed a faint background “texture” on the higher ISO shots when blinked with those at ISO 100. This was only noticeable when pixel peeping and only when blinking the 2 frames. It is unlikely that I would have been able to pick the ISO 400 shot just by itself.

I’m going to have to re-think this approach through further experimentation and researching what settings the macro experts use to achieve a better balance between daylight and flash.

The attached screen copies show the 4 metering modes of the 40D and the Flash settings.

Cheers

Dennis
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