How fast can you nail the settings with a hotshoe flash on camera?

While using a flash and bouncing it off different surfaces have given me great results, one thing I notice is that I don't change settings fast enough. As I prefer directional lighting (and hence choose surfaces on my left/right, rather than ceiling), the ETTL2 of my 580ex2 doesn't always seem to guess the flash power right. I have to adjust FEC, ambient exposure and also my flash head to make sure everything is balanced, which makes it way slower than simply shooting with my 6d in Av mode.

Do anyone else feel the same way? I've had a lot of practice these days - but with changing lighting conditions and having different surfaces to consider has slowed down my shooting considerably. could there be a better way of shooting more effectively?

Also, how smart exactly is the ETTL2? For example, is it able to detect how big a surface it is bouncing off, the material of the surface or? Also when detecting distance, if there's a full height metal rail next to me and I want to bounce off the glass surface that is 1m away, will it measure the right distance (1m) to bounce off the light?

thanks!

First to clear up an apparent lack of your understanding about how ETTL flash works...

1. The camera commands the flash to emit a 'preflash'
   
2. The camera reads the amount of light bouncing back thru the lens to the in-camera ETTL measurement sensor
   
3. The camera commands the flash to emit a precalculated amount of light when the shutter opens, based upon the result of step 2 metering.
   

the.forumer wrote in post #17354981
While using a flash and bouncing it off different surfaces have given me great results, one thing I notice is that I don't change settings fast enough. As I prefer directional lighting (and hence choose surfaces on my left/right, rather than ceiling), the ETTL2 of my 580ex2 doesn't always seem to guess the flash power right. I have to adjust FEC, ambient exposure and also my flash head to make sure everything is balanced, which makes it way slower than simply shooting with my 6d in Av mode.

Do anyone else feel the same way? I've had a lot of practice these days - but with changing lighting conditions and having different surfaces to consider has slowed down my shooting considerably. could there be a better way of shooting more effectively?

Also, how smart exactly is the ETTL2? For example, is it able to detect how big a surface it is bouncing off, the material of the surface or? Also when detecting distance, if there's a full height metal rail next to me and I want to bounce off the glass surface that is 1m away, will it measure the right distance (1m) to bounce off the light?

thanks!

As long as you don't outguess yourself and let the camera make the major exposure decisions, you should be able to get good results instantaneously.

Examples:

IMAGE LINK: http://i1174.photobuck​et.com …22a-1779b_zps13c8b6d1.jpg

IMAGE LINK: http://i1174.photobuck​et.com …22a-1590a_zpsc2b15346.jpg

IMAGE LINK: http://i1174.photobuck​et.com …21a-1213b_zps06112359.jpg

the.forumer wrote in post #17354981
While using a flash and bouncing it off different surfaces have given me great results, one thing I notice is that I don't change settings fast enough. As I prefer directional lighting (and hence choose surfaces on my left/right, rather than ceiling), the ETTL2 of my 580ex2 doesn't always seem to guess the flash power right. I have to adjust FEC, ambient exposure and also my flash head to make sure everything is balanced, which makes it way slower than simply shooting with my 6d in Av mode.

Do anyone else feel the same way? I've had a lot of practice these days - but with changing lighting conditions and having different surfaces to consider has slowed down my shooting considerably. could there be a better way of shooting more effectively?

Also, how smart exactly is the ETTL2? For example, is it able to detect how big a surface it is bouncing off, the material of the surface or? Also when detecting distance, if there's a full height metal rail next to me and I want to bounce off the glass surface that is 1m away, will it measure the right distance (1m) to bounce off the light?

thanks!

It gets faster and easier the more you do it. I like to shoot in Manual mode and underexpose the background a bit, then let the flash handle the subject. Occasionally I'll have to make a small exposure adjustment in post (or open up the shadows a bit) but it usually gets me pretty close and it's pretty consistent.

I agree with the above. Im usually just a smidge under, in manual mode, and the ETTL is pretty good. I only ride the flash compensation up and down a bit and usually leave my camera settings alone. If anything, Ill close the aperture some and up the iso to keep the same exposure but attain more DOF.