Pleae Help with flash question.

[mgs475]

I have a 430ex

[sparcd]

The zoom is because when you move it from pointing straight forward it no longer adjusts to match the camera zoom, it moves to be fixed at 50mm if I remember correctly.

[sparcd]

Try pulling the diffuser panel out too, then it zooms to 24mm.

[Wilt]

I have a 430ex and a 30d. today i was shooting some photos and i always shoot in av mode. Was in a darker area and the flash sync seemed to be off. It was leaving my shutter open for 1/30 of a sec or even longer and i had the flash on full automatic. It also does this with the on camera flash in av mode. I have never noticed it before as i have shot with this flash for a while now and always shoot aperture priority. Is this normal or Not?

Normal behavior for a Canon...Av says 'gimmee flash, but select a shutter speed which allows me to have the low level backround light register on the photo', and that can often mean absurdly slow shutter speeds surprise you if you are not paying attention to what the meter says about the ambient light exposure reading it is getting! This is why pros often choose M and set the shutter speed to one which is suffiently slow to register some of the ambient light, but not an absurdly slow one.

Second quick questions is when the flash is aimed straight forward away from me adn i push the push button to adjust the angle it zooms inside. Never noticed that before either. Thanks for the help.

Also normal. Read your owner's manual for an explanation of what you are experiencing.

[Curtis N]

When you use Av or Tv modes, you're telling the camera, "Select a shutter speed or aperture to expose the ambient light properly." If this isn't what you want the camera to do, then there's no point in using these modes. If you want flash to be your primary light source, Manual mode (on the camera) is usually the way to go.

Flash Photography 101 (link in my sig) might be a good place to start reading.

[Wilt]

I have often wished that there was a Custom Function that allowed you to set a lower limit on the speed which the camera would attempt to use with Av...e.g. that would permit a wedding shooter to allow his camera to shift down to 1/15 for flash as main source of light but with ambient lighting capturing the background (instead of it looking like a cave) and then go outside to shoot a portrait with synchro sun fill flash (to prevent the racoon eyes) and then go back indoors for more shots, yet do this without the need to shift the camera from M to Av and back again.