Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I will say I am new to this got my two ab800 set up on lowest setting with beauty dishes and diffusers. Camera ISO on 200 on nikon and I am flooded with light. Need help ASAP.

How bright your image is will depend on several factors.

First, make sure your camera is in Manual mode ("M" mode on the top dial). Also, some Nikon cameras have an ISO saftey shift function. This means even if your ISO is set to 200, if the camera thinks you are under exposing (and it probably will under studio lighting conditions), it will boost the ISO to something more suitable. Since it does not know the flashes are going to fire, you get an over exposed image. Your shutter speed should be around 1/200. A few clicks too much, and you will see a black band appear. A few clicks too low may not matter, or you may let in too much ambient light.

Also, make sure your expectations are reasonable. If you are trying to shoot at 1.4, then you may simply have too much light. Try setting the camera to ISO 100 or even lower (this may be listed as Lo1 or Lo3, etc). Really, a flash meter would help here, but trail and error will get you there.

Also, try taking a photo at the same camera settings, but do not fire the flash. Is the image properly exposed? Or overexposed? If so, adding ANY flash will further expose the image.

Depending on the beauty dish, they may be very efficient, or they may be set very close. Backing the lights off will reduce the exposure on your subject.

Lastly, just to be sure, do you have anything plugged into the telephone connection marked REMOTE on the back of the lights? If so, remove them and try again. This may be overriding your low power settings.

Thank you for the reply. I am at my end for things to try. I turned ISO all the way down moved the lights around. I have tried no flash just a rote trigger. I am using 35 mm lense. Nikon d5000 for a camera. Took some beautiful pictures last year with basic modeling lights. Thought would be easier if upgraded.

To be honest, this is a little vague. What were your results without firing the flash (keeping the same camera settings)? too bright? too dark?

Ok, you have a 35mm lens, but what aperture are you setting it to? Focal length (35mm) will have little to do with exposure. The aperture (f/1.8, f/2.8, etc) will impact the exposure directly. A setting of f/1.8 may be too bright, regardless of what else you do. You may need to set to f/4 or f/5.6

Are you in manual mode on the top dial of the camera? (Auto focus as set on the lens is OK)

My experience with my D90 at ISO 200 is that I need f/8 with a B800 having its power turned down to 1/6th or 1/8th power. (Which is why my second and third bees were B400s...) OTOH, I am using PLMs, which I've found to be seriously efficient even with the white version.

I'll echo Tech Support: What f-stop are you trying to shoot at?

Also, are you sure that you have "ISO sensitivity auto control" (aka "auto ISO") turned off? (You'll need to dig into the menu for this; just setting the mode dial to M won't do it. It's under "ISO sensitivity controls.")