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Photonak
6th of June 2005 (Mon), 20:53
http://img.dpreview.com/images/one.gif
Hi All,

Been experimenting with a slave attached to a couple of older flash units. My camera is A70, set to Manual, ISO50. White Balance is on AWB (Auto).

One flash is Canon Speedlight 155A. I can make it work quite well with the A70. It's not a very powerful unit (GN 51 (ASA100, ft). The light color is close to white, or not much different from the A70 flash.

When I use the Vivitar 283 (about 20 years old), the results are visibly yellow. I can get the exposure right, but I'm not happy with the color.

The lens on the 283 has slight yellow tint, but it's always been that way and did not bother film.

Anyone have experience with this. TIA

Photonak
PhotosGuy
6th of June 2005 (Mon), 22:45
The lens on the 283 has slight yellow tint, Mine has too, & has had it for the 30+ years I've had it. It's to cut down on UV light from the flash tube like a Skylight UV filter would. I've never noticed a problem, but I always use Custom WB. You could add a slightly blue filter to it.
AWB is extremly poor. See this & look at the comparisons in the 2nd pic:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=54281
Photonak
7th of June 2005 (Tue), 06:09
It's probably a problem with the white setting in the camera. Like Photosguy said, the yellow lens just compensates for the naturally-occurring blue uv light that most higher color-temperature flashes emit. If you bounce the light off a dead-white ceiling, it'll probably cool the color temperature to shift the light more toward the blue spectrum.

Thanks both.

I'm blaming it on the 283 lens/window, because I don't see anything else that would cause this. To reiterate, the same vintage and much more used Speedlight 155A seems to put out very white light for this camera.

There must be a difference in light, to which the Auto Balance system in the A70 camera is reacting and getting confused (or something).

I did bounce it off a "perfectly white" ceiling, but all things looked as if incandescent light was used of much lower temperature.

Will try yet anther flash just for the color and start messing with the White Balance. I do have filters for the 283, but the holder is bulky for casual use.
I like the 283 for the same reason others do. Power and fairly good exposure control, which it does on its own.

Photonak