D3100 Exposure Meter Flashing - need advice please!

Hello all

Fairly new to DSLR photography, and just taking my first steps into manual mode.

I have a query regarding the exposure meter that is vexing me a little - when taking pictures in relatively low light, say under artificial light, without using the flash, unless I use a long shutter speed and/or high ISO the picture is going to be underexposed and the meter accordingly tells me so - I understand that fine, and the exposure meter will usually flash, I think to indicate a serious underexposure.

However, if I pop the flash up, and shorten the shutter speed to, say, 1/200, the meter will continue to flash and show all the bars to the right indicating underexposure. If I take a picture in these circumstances, checking the histogram and the image itself reveals that the exposure is actually fine, so it's a little disconcerting, and I would like to be able to use the exposure meter when the flash is active to ensure my exposure is correct when shooting. I would have presumed that the camera, knowing that the flash would be triggered, would not continue to show an underexposure?

I hope this makes sense, and that someone will be able to shed some light on my query.

Thanks for reading and in advance for any replies.

Gary

Hi Gary,

Using a flash doesn't change the camera's metering of ambient light. It's still telling you that the image, if exposed solely by ambient light, would be underexposed. By using the flash, the camera and flash are communicating to let the flash know how much light to output to give you a correct exposure. The built-in meter in the camera can only meter ambient light. The flash is calculated but not displayed in your viewfinder.

What you're seeing is correct and normal.

EDIT: Regarding flash exposure.... since you can't meter or see the exposure before you take a shot, you do have to fire off the shot, view the image and/or histogram and then use flash exposure compensation (FEC) to adjust for your desired creative exposure.

If you find yourself shooting in similar lighting scenarios then experience over time will let you intuitively adjust FEC and then only make small adjustments as need be.

Hi Robert

Thanks for your response.

That does make sense now - I was unaware that the meter didn't take the impending light coming from the flash into account when metering, but I guess if its just measuring what light is present pre shot its bound to show an underexposure.

Many thanks again.

Gary