At what focal length are you shooting?
If your at a wide angle like 18mm, the flash will likely not cover the entire area. The center may be somewhat brighter and the camera will adjust by underexposing.
With the wide angle diffuser dropped down, the light is more evenly distributed and you won't get the hot spot. The camera's metering doesn't have to work to compensate for uneven lighting.

My pin had stuck "up" for the longest time, pretty much since I bought the flash. A little shake and it popped right down. Honestly if I knew how soft the mechanism was I'd probably had take it back right away.

Anyway, it recently got stuck inside such that I could not get it down. I read about it getting stuck in the downward position and didn't want to wait for that to happen.
So I opened the sucker up and put a tiny amount of soap shavings on the plastic pin that is pushed up by the collar ring. (we do the same thing for jacket zippers). Why they have plastic moving against plastic in that manner just seems silly. The metal pin moved quite well and didn't need any work.

Ya just have to be careful where the flakes spill off to and clean up well. When done, you cannot even see the coating... it is just enough to keep the plastic from sticking up the works.

It works better than new for me now.

If waiting for repairs isn't an option and you're comfortable opening up electrical devices, this might help once you get things open and freed up.
(none of those exposed wires run 300+ volts, do they? )

Sorry, with JPG, not much you can do after the fact. You might get a little if it isn't truly blown out, but this appears well beyond fixing.

The sound when opening a fresh brewski...




OK, maybe I'll come up with something else by Sunday.

In PTTL, you can simply adjust to +1.0 down to -3.0 stops (that is double the normal intensity, down to 1/8th power. Same amount, but in PTTL the metering is controlled by the camera, so flash ISO setting has no bearing on exposure.

If you change the flash mode to A you can change to response based on ISO, but this does not communicate with the camera. In this made the flash's sensor adjusts brightness according to its settings. i.e. just slightly smarter than Manual mode, but not necessarily knowledgeable of your camera settings.

By the way, in A mode, hit the S again, and you should be able to change the ISO. Two values can be modified in A mode, as opposed to PTTL or M.

I have to agree, the manual is not very specific on how things work. The above is unfortunately what I have determined from experimentation more than from reading the manual.

I assume your reader works with SDHC on other machines?? (Those cards do require newer readers to handle the new protocol.)

One thing that worked for a couple of devices on Vista is to power off the machine, plug in the device and boot the machine back up.
Vista might recognize the device on bootup and do its magic.
After that, you should be able to disconnect and reconnect at will, without having it connected on bootup again.

This did not work for my SDHC issue, but might for other.. (yeah just guessing).

I tried a dozen different solutions and had to restore my system once because I screwed up other devices with the some of the "suggestions" I found. None of them worked.

Good luck.

Did Vista come pre-installed on it?
It seems that usually gives much better results, as the whole thing is tested before it goes out of the factory.
The big problem is the upgrades from XP. My machine was supposed to have Vista but the OS wasn't ready yet so I had the free upgrade. Some of the issues had to be worked out by upgrades after the OS was released. (and some not so well, perhaps as the manufacturer may of hoped.)

Not sure if a clean install would have helped matters, but some software cam pre-packaged and is not available otherwise (at least not for free. )

Anyway, everything seems OK now. I like the fact that I can shoot in RAW and still see the thumbnails without adding JPEG to the mix. It just makes it that little bit easier to show previews to people.


Oddly, after three days of trying to get the SDHC card and reader to work I gave up. A week later it just magically started working. No idea why. Perhaps Microsoft updates fixed something.

Hmm, maybe that was my problem. I actually needed drivers for my credit cards! Argh!

Funny thing.,.. now trying to get my SDHC card to be readable by Vista. Cannot find any useful information on this issue yet. (It did work fine in XP.)

So far five different devices with five different problems and each with their own individual solution. I just cannot believe this much work is necessary when it just seemed automatic with XP.


Anyway, thanks. I fixed the title.

I'll save the goat.
I'm sure next time I plug in a new monitor, or put in a different CD/DVD or even plug the thing into a different power socket that I will have to install new drivers. I think I've read that I may need to face North and do some strange dance in a tu-tu to appease the Vista demons if I move the laptop to a different room.
Hopefully the goat can wear the tu-tu instead...


Just when you think Microsoft couldn't make the operating system any worse... they "innovate" and give us Vista.


What I really like... I can run the Remote Assistant just fine, but it won't detect the camera. Thanks to earlier postings, I know you have to run the software as "Administrator". Of course in doing so, I now have to answer questions whether I really, really, really want to run that program.
I feel so much safer and more secure now that Microsoft is protecting me from remotely using my camera.

OK, solved.
I went out and got the extra large goat as suggested.



Actually, read up a few dozen more pages... the silliest solution worked.
I simply rebooted with the camera connected to the PC. The camera was detected, and Remote Assistant worked flawlessly.
The camera is now detected even if it is not connected during bootup.

I don't know exactly why it works, but Vista appears to have its brians all sorted out... for now.