Yeah, Not a bad idea since it is apparently expected behavior.

Exactly. When the flash is mounted on the hot shoe, the camera is always flipping over when I hang it around my neck. With the grip, the camera stays upright... well with most of my lenses anyway.
Maybe I could solve that by taking more pictures and eliminate the need for the neck strap.

The K10D although larger, is still a bit small for me to hold comfortably. My hands do not feel like they're going to cramp up any more.

OK, maybe I missed something but I'm not sure what the expected behavior should be and I want to verify that my equipment isn't having more problems...

I have the K10D with grip, and extra battery of course.
I have the camera set to use the battery in the grip first.
When the grip battery is close to running out, the camera shows the battery is near dead and stops responding. If I turn it off then on, the battery signal shows half a battery and takes one or two more shots then goes dead again.
If I power off then on again, the battery signal is now at full strength.

Is it expected that the camera runs only off one battery and will not switch until the first battery is completely drained AND I switch the camera off/on a few times? Or should it switch automatically as the first battery goes out?


Would the preferred method perhaps be to Select Battery as Auto? Would this change the behavior for the better?

I prefer using the grip first, as it is easier to change on a day to day basis when I don't shoot 500 photos. (I'll swap the internal battery every few times to get them both used, etc... but generally that is something I'd like to avoid on a more frequent basis.)

Of course, more importantly, if I have two batteries, I'd prefer my camera not shut down when one battery is still at 100%!!

Damn! I sure hope he didn't use that lens for taking the sample shots.

Sincerely, if the samples images have to be that blurry to make it look good enough to sell, I sure don't want to come anywhere near that one.

When I have a studio type environment I put them on stands. But when on the go and walking around, I usually just attach the flash to the camera.

That being the case, I rarely have issues with the flash off to the side when diffused through brolleys.

I guess the alternative to a bracket is to make that hat thingymajig... there was a link on ePhotozince a while back where a guy attached a small reflective umbrella and the flash to a hat. Apparently it gave pretty decent results, if looking a bit bizarre at the same time.

Yes, it seems to be working "properly" in most cases. I am just surprised by the results. If there is a huge glaring bright hole in the image, it is metered just fine. Yet if there is just a tiny spec of reflection, the shot is blown to hell.
I'm not sure this is truly expected behavior. If it is not just my system and it is "expected", I'll learn to live with it and I'll try to work around it.

Oddly, I have a few pictures with reflective strips on clothing in them and they come out just fine. Results similar to the example above where a large portions of the image is overly bright, but the majority of the image is properly exposed.

Anyway, one such workaround might be to use the flash off-camera. I may give that a try... although holding the flash and trying to aim it correctly doesn't always work well. Guess I'll need to buy a bracket. The wifey will be so pleased that I want to buy another accessory.
I'm just glad at the moment that I have a little time to think up some reason for "our need" to afford the new D* lenses.

I seem to get the same results on spot, center and matrix. Yet for photos without these extreme highlights, the metering modes do seem to make a difference. So the system is working, it just isn't working anywhere near what I would expect.

I think the specular highlight has a lot to do with the issue. Although I'm not exactly sure how. From another very quick and non-scientific test it seems that the camera handles spot metering just fine... UNLESS a specular highlight falls within the metered area.
Even with a HUGE flash spot nearby the metering is still acceptable, but with the tiniest little spot in the center of the frame seems to spoil the results.

The following images are of a semi glossy photo (again of my dog) with some shiny objects nearby.

One good thing is that no matter how I tried to angle the flash or cover the sensors, the exposure seems to be similar.

A little depressing, but I think I know what types of things to look out for. It is just very hard to see a microdot of reflection off something like the ring on the dog's collar or in the darker case below, probably the glint on the edge of one of the trophies.


http://moringello-east.no-ip.com:8080/test/sample_02.jpg

Edit: I took out the inline image, as it ruined the formatting of the entire page. Ugh...

And wouldn't you know it, as I try to reproduce the problem using matte surfaces everything is consistent. A little darker than I would like but I just cannot reproduce the wildly varying results seen earlier.

I've had similar problems with people... I wonder now if even the tiniest spec of highlight such as from eyes, teeth or jewelry can throw off the metering that much. I would think not, but it would explain the problems I've seen.

Honestly, I don't buy that myself, so I'll have to play a bit more and see what I can do. At least it is a starting point.

Exactly. Although it did fire, I saw the flash. When the flash does not fire the image is almost totally black. (When there is no flash on camera, the exposure is compensated sufficiently, but shutter would be too slow for shake reduction to do much good.)

Anyway, sorry about the small images. I thought they would sufficiently indicate what I was trying to say. Larger ones are here if interested:

http://moringello-east.no-ip.com:8080/test/_IGP3431.jpg
http://moringello-east.no-ip.com:8080/test/_IGP3432.jpg