-= T2i / 550D users UNITE! (4) =-

Inchpractice wrote in post #14762918
Nice horse series DT. You definitely picked out the best one to post. I prefer your outdoor stuff to your indoor stuff.

Btw people, I know this is a bit of a newbie question but I never use the flash.
What do you do when you need to take a picture in a very dark situation?
If you switch on the onboard flash it limits the ISO to 400 which then slows down your shutter speed so much that you get camera shake.
Taking it without the flash would require an ISO of 12,800 which would be pretty unusable.
Can you bypass this automatic 400 ISO thing....?

Thx inch

Jamganz nice series of the mountain range .. I love mountains ...

waterrockets wrote in post #14763365
I hear you there. Short story: you cannot get faster than 1/200 shutter speed with pop-up flash on the T2i.

To address your problem, can you tell us what mode you are shooting?

I would recommend M at f/1.8. Set your ISO and FEC such that the flashed subject looks correct, then work with your shutter speed to get the background off the left side of the histogram a bit.

With the un-modified pop-up flash, your shots will pretty much always look like they came off of a point and shoot camera because of the flat lighting. You can make some simple bounce devices with scrap paper products from your kitchen that will bounce up to the ceiling, and the shots will improve DRAMATICALLY.

Lastly, don't think you have to spend $570 to get external flash. Yongnuo has ETTL flash for $70 that will bounce just fine. Throw it on AV with the flash pointed at the ceiling, and indoor shooting will get a lot simpler in a hurry.

Sorry, again I should've said that I almost always use Av mode.
Didn't even cross my mind that changing to M would solve the problem. D'oh!
I think $70 is about £40-50 so that's pretty reasonable actually.
Thanks for your help.

Monkey Mash Button wrote in post #14763418
Somewhere in the menus (custom functions maybe), you can set what Av mode will pick for a shutter speed when using flash: something like 1)Auto, 2)1/60-1/200, or 3)1/200. I throw the camera in manual, expose for the background (or under-expose by a stop or so), and let the ETTL flash do its thing. I pretty much start with ISO 100 and 1/200 shutter and then dial aperture to taste. I've also set Tv mode to 1/200 for run-and-gun outdoor fill flash. The pop-up flash doesn't have much range, 10-15 feet or so.

I've never tried taking the ISO over 400 with flash so didn't know that was a limitation.

and +1 to what waterrockets wrote. Bounce that flash indoors! The pop-up flash will diffuse and/or bounce indoors with a little cleverness.

I'll have a look in the menu settings, thanks.

By the way, one of the situations I was talking about was with this shot taken in a hotel on holiday.
This is the exif info:

1/60 second
ISO 6400
f1.8
Focal length 50mm (nifty fifty)
Mode: Tv
Flash: off

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/56558970@N07/7​639347148/

Did you press the flash button? (the lightning bolt button) This should pop up the flash, and you'll see the flash icon (lightning bolt) in the viewfinder display. Did any of this happen? The other challenge is that the T2i's flash is weak, and may just not have reached the subjects, but it doesn't look like it fired at all in that photo.

...and nice work capturing the jumper at apogee -- 1/60 should show some serious blur on that dude.

waterrockets wrote in post #14761946
littlebay: wonderful portrait
marm o set: great bike silhouette, as DT says, colors are awesome, and exposure is perfect
monkey mash button: love the triplet flash -- almost makes the outdoor fence look like an indoor studio
Peter: great sunset shots -- great colors (watch the horizon in PP though!)
DT: nice captures of the horse antics. I just finished (re-)reading "A Horse and His Boy" to my kids last night, and this reminds me of Bree getting his last good roll in before he goes into Narnia, where he's not sure if it's appropriate for Talking Horses to roll in that society...

jamganz wrote in post #14762178
you're killing it lately Peter! Nice series.

Thanks waterrocket for the reminder.

Thanks Mitch and jam.

little grebe in the rain

waterrockets wrote in post #14763812
Did you press the flash button? (the lightning bolt button) This should pop up the flash, and you'll see the flash icon (lightning bolt) in the viewfinder display. Did any of this happen? The other challenge is that the T2i's flash is weak, and may just not have reached the subjects, but it doesn't look like it fired at all in that photo.

...and nice work capturing the jumper at apogee -- 1/60 should show some serious blur on that dude.

As it says in the exif the flash was switched off.
I had presumed (perhaps wrongly) that with the flash turned on the ISO would again be limited to 400 which would in turn affect the shutter speed as it did in Av mode.
Not thinking straight again.

Yeah my hands are quite steady when it comes to slow shutter speeds. I have a shot somewhere that was taken handheld at 1/10 and you can't see camera shake without viewing it at 100%. Maybe it's because I don't smoke or drink coffee....?

Ok, the way your "ideally..." sentence was worded, I didn't think you were controlling all of your settings.

I don't know of any flash-related limitation on ISO. You should be able to choose any ISO in a flashed shot unless I'm mis-remembering the user manual. At any rate, in that shot, you should be able to set your shutter to anything 1/200 or longer, set your ISO where you like, and control whether the flash fires or not.

Another thing to consider when shooting in the creative modes (TV/AV): how are you metering? I shoot M most of the time, so I prefer spot metering, then I choose where I meter when I set up the shot. If you have evaluative metering in TV, the camera could just be happy with the bright spots combined with the dark spots. If you spot meter off of one of the red tunics, you might find you get better results.

Rapid portrait I made the other day of the wife in the pool. Lately I'm addicted to convert everything to BW...does it work here?

1.

Sorry guys, I am getting a bit lost now. < 24 hours and have like I don't know how many pages to wade through. Ouch.

Bobo...love them all, #3 for me.

A little experiment...can a doll house be creepy?

waterrockets wrote in post #14763936
Ok, the way your "ideally..." sentence was worded, I didn't think you were controlling all of your settings.

I don't know of any flash-related limitation on ISO. You should be able to choose any ISO in a flashed shot unless I'm mis-remembering the user manual. At any rate, in that shot, you should be able to set your shutter to anything 1/200 or longer, set your ISO where you like, and control whether the flash fires or not.

Which mode are we talking here?

Yay!
My morning commute photo got Explored today!
I'm filled with rainbows, puppies, and gummy frogs at the moment

^^^ cool!