300D AV Mode Flash

[drisley]

My new Digital Rebel just arrived.
I have been reading the manual while the battery charged and got about half way thru.I decided to give the camera a test run once the battery charged.

I turned on the flash, set to AV mode, and noticed that the shutter speed did not adjust for the flash. In a dark room for example, in AV mode, the shutter speed might say 4 seconds. When I pop out the flash, it still says 4 seconds. I guess you would call it slow synchro. Where in the menu do I turn that off?

This is quite different behaviour compared to my G3.

PS. I do have a 420EX which I will try out later.

[mlfrancis]

You can't change the way it works in the Rebel. The way you describe it is how almost all SLRs work. The G-series of cameras did't work this way, but that was a shortcoming. They were designed to make sure you could get, or almost get, a hand held shot no matter what in Av.

Why does Av work the way you describe? It is the way it meters the lighting. In P, the camera treats the flash as the main lighting and will give you a hand holdable shot, but at the sacrifice of the background (can go black). In Tv and Av, the camera meters for the background lighting and only uses the flash as fill flash. So, you can get a several second shot that is not hand holdable.

Just the way it works.

Later,
Michael

[eland]

I've never handled a Rebel 300 but from other SLRs if eg you use Tv
(or Av) the shutter speed will show a speed as though the flash is not up.
However the moment you half depress the shutter button the shutter speed
will default to the camera's synch speed.
eg. You may set the shutter speed in Tv to 1/1000 sec.
With the flash up, the speed will drop to the Synch Speed as soon as
you half depress the shutter button.
eland

[drisley]

Hmmm, thanks for the answers guys.

So, basically, if I want to use the 420ex bounce flash in AV mode, in a dark room, I would not be able to get a hand holdable shot right?

I would have to switch to manual mode, and set a proper hand holdable speed, and set my aperture as I like?

[ohenry]

I have found that I get the best results using M mode, just as you described. Av and Tv are fine for fill flash, but not very reliable for main lighting. P mode is just too limiting as you will generally get 1/60 at the widest aperature your lens has. Canon's ETTL is quite different from TTL so if you have experience with other TTL flash/camera combinations, you'll need to forget much of that and relearn ETTL.

Good information can be found at http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash.htm/

[Tom W]

My Elan II is the same way - shutter priority and aperture priority will give you an exposure as if the flash wasn't there. This is useful for fill-flash situations. Program mode will give you flash at 1/60 by default, but you can alter the program by turning the main dial after depressing the shutter button half-way to display the camera's exposure settings. There may be a way to change the default on the D-Reb 300, but I'm not familiar enough with it to know.