Manual Exposure Problems w/ A70

[nateb]

I have the A70 and was trying out the flash settings in the manual mode... reducing the flash output and such a few weeks ago.

Last night when I was screwing around taking pictures in the manual mode (M), I noticed that the meter was way off. If I had the flash set to go off, it didn't seem to know it, and would say the picture would be greatly underexposed. If I reduced the shutter speed to a point that the meter said it was right, the picture would of course come out extremely over exposed.

My questions is if anyone else has noticed this problem and if it's typical or if I have something set on my camera that it isn't taking the flash into account in metering in manual mode. Went throught the manual looking for answers, removed the batteries, but it still wouldn't take the flash into account when metering in M.

It was metering correctly in A, TV, P, automatic, all other modes... just when it was in M, it gave me the same meter readings regardless if the flash was set to go off or not.

[stopbath]

The meter reading of the camera in manual mode is "of the current scene" and there is no compensation for the level of output expected by the flash.

In manual mode, you are able to set the level of the flash 1/3, 2/3 or full power. Expose for the desired light in the back ground, and then use your flash power control to light on your subject (along with needed aperture changes). This may take a few test shots to achieve the lighting values you desire.

[nateb]

Thanks for the reply. I wanted to make sure there wasn't something wrong with it.

I did read in the manual how to reset the camera (by holding down the menu button for more than 5 seconds and then choosing "reset) and removed the batteries and the backup battery to totally reset it, and of course it was the same. I didn't think anything could be wrong since it meters fine in all other modes with or without the flash set to go off... but thanks for the confirmation and piece of mind. I don't use M mode a lot, but since I can't really manually adjust the flash output on my film rebel (unless I bought the 550ex speedlight), it's kind of fun to have that option here.