Tried shooting in low light

newbie here. Tried shooting in low light with 580ex ii flash. Exposer to low, lens will not close even in manual mode. 2.8 at 1/60. when in auto mode ettl works fine. HELP!

kaiwiki wrote in post #7006993
Exposer to low, lens will not close even in manual mode.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you trying to set the camera's aperture and shutter speed with the camera's light meter? If so, this isn't what you want to be doing. If it is dark and you want to use the flash in E-TTL and the camera on manual, don't try to use the camera's meter if it is giving you exposures values you don't want to use. Just set the camera to something reasonable, say f/5.6 at 1/200, and shoot away. The flash will provide all the light visible in the picture.

Now, if all you want to do is have the flash provide all the light for the picture, then stop reading at this point. The rest of this will only confuse you until you have a grasp on how to do a simple point and shoot flash picture with the camera on manual and the flash on E-TTL.

If you want the room light to be part of the picture, then you need to pay attention to what the room light reads on your camera's meter. You may want to underexpose the room light some. If so, just meter the scene and set the camera to a setting that would be used for a brighter scene. For instance, if the room light meters f/5.6 at 1/60 and you want to under expose it by one stop, then set the camera to f/5.6 at 1/125 or f/8 at 1/60. Just remember that if you underexpose the ambient light by two stops or more, it will not register as a significant part of the image. Also, if the room light is below a level that allows a reasonable exposure, then you probably can't mix the two successfully.

I think you mean the shutter won't shoot the image. Am I right? That does happen. When the exposure is registering too low with the camera, it will not fire. Yes, this does happen. If you have on P it will fire because the camera is deciding what to do.

We need either much more detail in your description of the problem, or we need sample images with EXIF info.

Thanks, Curtis, I was going to ask that.