The concept of a pre-flash is acceptable, if the human system worked as the designer anticipated, but almost invariably the first flash closes the lids of the eyes, before it closes the pupils!
I think the lids have quicker muscles.
C'mon now! Think about it!
If you (anybody) don't want red-eye OR closed eyelids, mount the flash off the camera, use bounce flash, a filtered flash, use umbrellas, whatever, but eliminate the pre-flash.
A question, are all TTL flash units plagued with "pre-flash?" I don't think so. Pre-flash is fairly recent plague, while TTL flashes have been along for quite a while.
I think I read somewhere that the "P-" portion of it can be turned off on the AF360FGZ (is that what you have?) and that the AF280 TTL doesn't have it. But, maybe you need the extra oomph of the bigger flash...
All the above is "as I remember," and I can't depend on that as much as I used to... <g>
keith whaley
Tanya Mayer Photography wrote:
[...]
Now as for the closed eyes thingy - with these two weddings combined, I shot exactly 835 separate images. In total, I delivered 585 images as proofs, leaving me with 250 "rejects", from two separate shoots. Of these 250, 35 were due to exposure problems (flash misfires and blown highlights etc), 40 were due to crappy focus/camera shake/unwanted movement, 26 were from blown highlights, 16 were due to bad facial expressions and the remaining 133 "rejects" were thrown away due to people CLOSING their eyes!! That is a HUGE amount, and all I can say is that I am LUCKY that I usually shoot multiples of most shots. In the second wedding in particular, there were three separate ladies who had their eyes closed in EVERY shot that they were in. One lady wanted a shot with her husband and 7 children - I took 16 separate shots and STILL didn't get one with her eyes open!! Another lady wanted a shot with her fiancee, and again after 9 separate shots, we achieved only 2 with her eyes open!
I am guessing this problem is due to the P-TTL flash prefire on the AF360fgz, but I am starting to wonder if P-TTL really stands for P(ain in the arse)-TTL. I am finding that when I used it set on manual, I don't have half as many eye closing problems.
Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated...
And now that I have put you all to sleep "flogging my wares", I am going back into my hidey hole to work on some clients' albums...
TIA, tan.
