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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spb_stan" data-source="post: 636017" data-attributes="member: 43545">What you experiences with the balanced background lighting is new for the D500. It is something we do automatically manually, and was one of the criteria in the list above in deciding the ratio of subject and background. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are two metering systems that are independent, in the camera and in the flash. They are independent and come up with different results because they are looking at different things. The camera, in Matrix metering mode is looking at the whole scene with a little bias for the subject under the focus point and the flash is in spot metering mode which only looks at the point under the focusing point. The flash does what is has to to expose the point under the focus point correctly  The subject is closer so any light falling on it will reflect more light to the sensor and expose well. The background will not be illuminated as well by the flash because for correct exposure of the subject requires less light than the background. Being further away, the fall off of life, the amount light intensity of light falling on a given area, say, per square centimeter, decreases at a logarithmic rate with distance or more accurately as the square of the distance from a point source. That means anything further back will be have lower amount of light illuminating each square centimeter than an object just ahead of it closer to the flash. The light reflected back to the sensor is attenuated the same way.  The rate of fall off of light intensity is defined by the Inverse Square Law. For a camera to try to decrease the illumination difference between a foreground subject and distant background it has a few options. One, is to bias expose calculations for the entire matrix meter reading so more ambient light is captured, by longer exposure, wider aperture, or higher ISO. To balance that increased sensitivity to ambient light the flash power must be turned down a lot.  With background balance setting, a much higher ISO is used to get high ambient light, and flash power it turned way down because the subject and background are going to be exposed more before the flash is even introduced into the  equation. The D500 has the feature others do not, and it automates what photographers do without thinking when they decide how much balance is needed between room light and subject light. It could be a cool feature but could also add a lot of confusion as it has done in this case. I still say, shot with all that turned off. For artistic reasons you might want the subject to be well exposed and the background blurred and dim for optimum subject isolation. Simple, lower ISO which will increase flash power in TTL mode, and that ratio of foreground and background gets greater. What more balance between the darker background and forward subject, easy, lower shutter speed. In full manual mode you have the meter reading telling you in real time what the ratio is. Perfect...no guessing. Watch the meter as you meter the scene, what background 1 stop under subject, rotate the ISO or shutter to move the meter 1 stop to the left. The flash does not care, it is going to adjust power to center the subject meter(under the focus point) but the Inverse Square law says the background will by a stop lower. What the background to get very dark, almost black to isolate the subject from the room? Easy, move the meter far to the left and the flash will ignore that and increase power while the camera was lowered in sensitivity so backgrounds are almost black and the subject pops out as fully exposed. Here are two examples, one taken in a cafe that was bright and crowded so my dinner companion would have been lost in background clutter so lowered iso to reduce the background but still have it relatively bright after opening the  aperture to f/1.8. I wanted her to be less bright, and more dreamy so dialed in 1stop lower flash compensation. Remember, this little cafe was full of people and as bright as a grocery store:[ATTACH]266030[/ATTACH]Here is another image also in manual where I wanted the bright restaurant to fade to cause the eye to focus on the bright reflective dress and lovely slight smile of my friend...lowered iso and increase shutter a little to drop the background 2 stops[ATTACH]266031[/ATTACH]And here is one I took on the roof of the art center net to our home of my GF. She is close and if left up to an auto mode, the dark cloudy night would be totally black. I wanted street lights to be 2 stops lower than Victoria, but the meter said it was 5 stops low so I dialed in higher iso and lowered shutter to get more exposure of the dim background. [ATTACH]266032[/ATTACH]Here is one I used longer shutter to increase the dark hotel room to normal day brightness so the meter on the room was 1/2 stop below center and lowered flash power to balance the room ambient level using FEC -1.3. All these are grab shots, 1 second to set up without taking my eye from the VF, just rotate the shutter speed wheel or the aperture wheel. It is faster to take than describe. [ATTACH]266033[/ATTACH]If I had left it up to the camera, exposure would have been fine but they would not the the same shot, not what I wanted and they would have been snap shots little different than my telephone would have taken.Two last points1: Your camera seems to be working great, better than any other crop frame camera in the world, nothing better or more capable.2: It is going to be harder to learn the fundamentals of exposure because it has so many functions that automate much of the process. I suggest going back to basics, everyone off auto modes and shoot fully manual even without flash, in a few days the  relationship between ISO, aperture and shutter will become intuitive and every shot will be more deliberate. Keeper rate increases and few are mysteries why they did not turn out as expected. After a few thousand shots in full manual exposure, you go to  auto when you want quick snaps and manual when you have specific ideas of what  you want the results to be.  The experienced shooters use manual because it is easier, and because the shots are closer to what they intend.</blockquote>

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