Dziadzi wrote:
I have been taking photos of my 6 grandkids for over 20 years, however, the pictures I take with my Nikon SB-800 are terribly under or over exposed. In all honesty, I don't take many flash photos with this equipment. So, my question is this, what are the best overall camera settings to get good quality flash photos with my D7100 and SB-800? I would really like to take better flash photos. Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks! Frank
You don't say what ambient light you have, e.g. are you shooting indoors with reasonable or poor light to require use of flash?
What jumps out at me is that you say they are "terribly under or over exposed". Whilst I do not have an SB-800 I have the 600, 910 and 5000 and their control in TTL is extremely good as far as 'exposure/brightness' of results when used within their operating range.
Dziadzi wrote:
Most my attempts at flash have been in the manual mode. Is that the best mode for flash shooting? I am simply looking for a baseline of "suggested settings" for this camera/flash set up. I will gladly experiment once I get a good feel for the best settings to use. I have seen suggestions for "sports settings", but have not seen any suggestions for basic flash setup. Thanks!
Firstly I would suggest we look at and investigate why they are not exposing reasonably well, forgetting about such items as diffusers and bounce to start with. All they do is 'improve' the quality of the light hitting the subject w.r.t. softness and shadows.
I would suggest you set your camera to manual, 1/200s (sync speed), f/5 (approx.), ISO 200, flash mounted on it in TTL with no FEC and pointing directly forward.
Then take a pic at those settings with the flash turned off, this will show you what ambient light you are capturing, if indoors this will be very low. Adjusting aperture or ISO at this stage would decrease/increase the brightness of the subject but keep ambient low to start with.
Now turn the flash on and wander around the house taking pictures of anything in bright and darker rooms. The only time they should be under or overexposed is if you are too far away or too close. Let us know how you got on.
Dziadzi wrote:
Should I use AF-A, as opposed to AF-S? Which ISO to start, 400? Focus setting.......Matrix? Any other settings, for starters?
Use AF-S and the centre single point focus to start with, with matrix metering. The reason for AF-S is that on some cameras the 'focus assist light' does not work with AF-C and beware that with the lens cap fitted this 'may' impair the directional focus assist light.