My Camera is Giving me Fits

Hello to all. Just a note to say Hi. Due to the economy I have had to put the Studio in the "stand by mode" and have taken a job that has me traveling around the state. Can you believe there is a place on this planet with no internet service. The Town House Motel in Lusk, Wyoming is one such place. Anyway, I will check in when it is possible. Next time I will have some pictures of wonderful Wyoming USA.

Onto my problem. My daughter was married yesterday and my K20D was having a fit. Taking the advice in an earlier post, I put it in full auto. I mean auto focus, auto WB, and P exposure. 2/3 of my photos were under exposed. By the way I am using a Pentax AF 360 FTZ flash. This morning I looked at all the info that the camera saves. What I noticed was that the shutter speed seemed to change radically from shot to shot. 3 seconds to 180th second under the same light. The bad part is that some of the 3 second exposures the camera set the iso at 800. They were totally blown out. Most of the under exposed were at 180th and iso 200. With the exception of the photos I did manually, the apature was 4 or 5.6 the camera did not select any other apatures. Is this what happens in low light? Out side in full sun or even on an overcast day the camera seems to function normally with exposure you would expect to see for the conditions. Is this normal for this model or should I get it checked out? The Pop up flash had similar results.
Thanks,
Steven

I believe it's a problem with most DSLR because they aren't point and shoot.

It's known that the camera underexpose around 2/3 to 1 stop when using a flash and certainly with highlights you can get problems and under expose more.
Sometimes it's good though because Pentax is more sensitive in the dark than most other brands and the white wedding dress doesn't get blown out.

Wheres Wyoming:



Seriously though that doesn't sound good news with the camera, have you tried it with another lens to determine if that is the problem, also try leaving the batteries out for a while then switching the camera back on again.

Steve,

I don't own a K20 (I wish) but it occurs to me that weddings with their mixture of bright white dresses and dark male suits have the reputation for being notoriously difficult to expose correctly. Perhaps the meter was alternately picking up on high contrast light and dark areas which was fooling it!

On an unrelated matter: I hear E. Annie Proulx has moved to live in Wyoming. I don't suppose you live near her. Probably not, your states's probably a bit bigger than, say, Rutland.

Best wishes,

Andrew

P.S. In my humble opinion she's one of the best writers writing in English today.

Could you upload for us a typical photo of the event with the full EXIF, that would tell us a lot.

Great idea, Stef.

A.

Are you sure the camera wasn't set to spotmeter? If set on spotmeter and you don't realize it, it can really screw up your pictures.

Hi guys I'm back, thanks to my new HP Pavilion Note Book and wireless internet.

Sorry but I dont have any of the pictures left. they were all deleted in a fit of anger and disgust.

Thanks for all of the input.
Steven

With the K20D and the AF360 FGZ, I would set the flash compensation (on the flash itself) to +1 stop and sometimes even the camera to +.3EV or may be even +.7EV. This usually gave me the best results.

If the camera functions OK normally, then it is likely either to be a technique problem, or a faulty flash. And the former is much more probable.

As the mad Welshman says, weddings are notorious for exposure problems, and the best advice is NOT to go fully Auto. Pentaxian's point re spot-metering is also very valid.

It's a shame you deleted the pictures, because if it was a technique problem, we probably could have told you where you were going wrong.

P-TTL flash is meant to make things easier, but it often gives unexpected results. You need to know exactly how it works in order to get the best out of it, and frankly, I prefer to do things the old way with manual flashguns.

Mattmatic's guide is well worth reading, and covers manual flash as well as P-TTL.

http://www.mattmatic.co.uk/news10577.html

Good luck.

G

Have you reformatted teh card or used it again since?

If not, you can possibly recover the images which can be looked at in detail to discover what metering you used, flash usage &c and other members could give you some feedback on what went wrong.