kristentyler
Senior Member
Hi Nikonites !!
So first, keep in mind, I haven’t had my Nikon camera for too long, so I’m still learning the ropes after making the switch from Canon.
Here is the gear set up that I had last night.
ISSUE #1: While shooting last night, I noticed that there were a NUMBER of shots fired that came out black on my camera. Like completely black, no light whatsoever, including natural light. It seemed to only happen when I first picked up my camera after not using it for a few minutes. I thought maybe it was from the flash being in sleep mode, but there was NO light! Could these be caused by a low charge on the camera battery itself? (it was at about 1 bar of charge pretty much all night, and i kept rotating out my batteries in the charger to keep them alive during my shoot).
ISSUE #2: My flash was not firing a steady power of light. Ie: One shot would be perfectly focused. Then the next shot would fire less light, and the next even less light, and so forth. And then I'd get one PERFECTLY bright/exposed shot out of nowhere. lol I had brand new batteries in the flash.. is it possible that they just died quickly, and thus were causing an uneven distribution of light on each shot? I feel like I don’t normally run into that issue when my flash is ON camera so I was pretty confused by it. Is it possibly that the flash used more AA battery power OFF camera?
I am charging my Nikon battery all day today in hopes of checking on whether the batteries themselves need replacing. (Really hoping not!)
I’ve never worked with off camera flash lighting before, so some of these things were really baffling me last night !
I appreciate any insight into these issues, thank you so much !
:redface-new:
So first, keep in mind, I haven’t had my Nikon camera for too long, so I’m still learning the ropes after making the switch from Canon.
Here is the gear set up that I had last night.
- Nikon D7000 with extra battery handgrip
- Nikon SB-800
- One see through umbrella, on a stand w/ a Flash Mounting Bracket Strobist Swivel Umbrella Mount Flash Bracket
- A set of wireless receivers for my camera to my flash that was on the stand.
- Two Nikon camera batteries that don’t seem to want to charge (side note: I recently realized that my Nikon battery charger was not charging, so I bought an aftermarket one. It arrived to my house about 2 hours prior to my shoot last night, so I didn’t have too much time to charge. However, I’m not even sure these batteries are CHARGING. I don’t recall the last time that I saw the battery charge above two hash marks).
- Shooting on Manual mode on my camera, and TTL on the flash.
ISSUE #1: While shooting last night, I noticed that there were a NUMBER of shots fired that came out black on my camera. Like completely black, no light whatsoever, including natural light. It seemed to only happen when I first picked up my camera after not using it for a few minutes. I thought maybe it was from the flash being in sleep mode, but there was NO light! Could these be caused by a low charge on the camera battery itself? (it was at about 1 bar of charge pretty much all night, and i kept rotating out my batteries in the charger to keep them alive during my shoot).
ISSUE #2: My flash was not firing a steady power of light. Ie: One shot would be perfectly focused. Then the next shot would fire less light, and the next even less light, and so forth. And then I'd get one PERFECTLY bright/exposed shot out of nowhere. lol I had brand new batteries in the flash.. is it possible that they just died quickly, and thus were causing an uneven distribution of light on each shot? I feel like I don’t normally run into that issue when my flash is ON camera so I was pretty confused by it. Is it possibly that the flash used more AA battery power OFF camera?
I am charging my Nikon battery all day today in hopes of checking on whether the batteries themselves need replacing. (Really hoping not!)
I’ve never worked with off camera flash lighting before, so some of these things were really baffling me last night !
I appreciate any insight into these issues, thank you so much !
:redface-new: