bwlchmawr wrote:
True. It's also hard to buy a poor camera these days, it's just that some suit the operator better than others and some, as David mentioned above, perform better under specific circumstances.

pink wrote:
I was thinking of updating my k5 to a k3
pink

McGregNi wrote:
Yes ! Your highlight metering is the most important thing .... Bright dresses with shine will play havoc with your auto metering, leading to underexposure when close in and blown highlights when further out.....

I would fix everything in manual, both camera and flash exposures. Zoom in to the dress only, exclude everything else, see what the camera thinks,, then add exposure value as needed to pull the highlights up towards the right edge of the histogram. You're probably talking around plus 1 or plus 1.5 stops for that sort of dress you described. Include the flash as well to get the power right for this correct highlight exposure.

Once that's fixed you know your key subject is correctly exposed no matter what zoom setting you then use, so long as the subject stays in the same light and your flash to subject distance remains the same.

I'm really talking here about static, more organised shots..... For the dynamic, moving around ones, then you might want to go to on -camera bounced flash, and I would switch to P-TTL and juggle with flash compensations. The ambient exposure can remain fixed in manual, that usually works well.

Set up the dress if possible and practice this stuff now, try to simulate similar might conditions you will have, just to get quicker and efficient at getting it all set up.