BetterPhoto Q&A
Category: New Answers

Donna Dunbar		Flash Units I recently did a wedding for a friend, the studio work came out excellant however most of the indoor photography using the flash was horrible.Some of it was fine. I recently bought a Nikon f-100 and bought a flash that was for auto focus but not a Nikon speedlight, I figure that the flash wasn't recovering as fast as the shutter was releasing. Can anyone suggest what type of flash unit would be ideal for that type of camera work? Hopefully my friend will forgive me and if I ever do a wedding in the future I will be able to get the results I need.Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. :-) To love this question, log in above February 29, 2004

Andy J. Lastra		Donna, Your question raises a few important unknowns. First off, flash can't fix everything. That said, Metz,Sunpak, and Quantum make outstanding handlemount and camera mount flash units. I'm a Canon user myself so i'm not well versed in whether these companies make dedicated units for Nikon. Regardless, for low light flash pictures, look into the highest guide number you can afford. The flash units guide number will tell you how close to and how far away from a given subject you can be and still produce correctly exposed pictures. Many professionals use the Sunpak 555, which is what I use and I believe it can be purchased with a module that will connect to your Nikon. Metz is similar but is more pricey as is Quantum. The Metz 45CL-4 is a common choice. Something else to consider. Many of us who shoot weddings shoot available light. This means we shoot with film that is fast but still maintains excellent grain quality. Shooting fast film with fast lens (F1.2-2.8) lets you get fast shutter speeds in low light and allows you to hand hold the camera and avoid a tripod in many instances....it also allows you to avoid having to mess with a flash unit. Consider Fuji NPZ 800 portrait film indoors, Kodak Professional 800 black and white indoors, Fuji NPH 400 indoors and out. A flash unit with as high a guide number as you can afford will be much more versatile than a smaller unit. Connected to a power pack, the Sunpak unit recycles every 1.5 seconds. Most shoe mounted flash units will recycle between 6 and 13 seconds using AA batteries and about 4-8 seconds using NiCd. With a power pack hooked on your belt, and NiCd clusters in the flash unti, you'll get about 220 flash shots on a single charge with fanatstic recycle time. If you really want to shoot weddings, sports, other action shots, this is the only way to go if you want to use flash. Please note, this answer barely crapes the tip of the iceberg on flash photography!! Good luck! To love this comment, log in above March 01, 2004

This old forum is now archived. Use improved Forum here Report this Thread