Confused on Sony Alpha and Home Studio set-up

External Since: Nov 27, 2006 Posts: 6

Hello,

I recently purchased a Jessops external flash home studio system for
use with my Sony Alpha. The master flash head connects via a sync
cable, but the only connector that Jessops had was a "Minolta
dynax" hotshoe adaptor. This should have worked, as the Dynax is
compatible with the Sony Alpha.

However, when I connect it all, the camera does not seem to recognise
the flash unit.

The flash heads (master and slave) fire, but the camera does not show a
flash icon in the view finder. Also, it is not setting the exposure
for the flash, which means that I am going to always have to manually
set the exposure. If I don't do this, the exposure is trying to set
(in auto mode) for a 6 second exposure so everything is very badly over
exposed.

Is this correct? I would have thought that it should recognise that
the flash is charged, and therefore set the exposure automatically. Or
am I asking too much. I am new to home studio/portrait so getting my
feet wet.

Jaffa

External Since: Nov 19, 2006 Posts: 268

On Sat, 02 Dec 2006 09:50:53 -0800, JaffaB wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I recently purchased a Jessops external flash home studio system for
> use with my Sony Alpha. The master flash head connects via a sync
> cable, but the only connector that Jessops had was a "Minolta
> dynax" hotshoe adaptor. This should have worked, as the Dynax is
> compatible with the Sony Alpha.
>
> However, when I connect it all, the camera does not seem to recognise
> the flash unit.
>
> The flash heads (master and slave) fire, but the camera does not show a
> flash icon in the view finder. Also, it is not setting the exposure
> for the flash, which means that I am going to always have to manually
> set the exposure. If I don't do this, the exposure is trying to set
> (in auto mode) for a 6 second exposure so everything is very badly over
> exposed.
>
> Is this correct? I would have thought that it should recognise that
> the flash is charged, and therefore set the exposure automatically. Or
> am I asking too much. I am new to home studio/portrait so getting my
> feet wet.

If the flash is not designed specifically to work with that brand of
camera it's not going to work with through-the-lens flash metering, you
need to set the aperture and shutter speed manually in accordance with the
output of the flash. A flash meter will help a good deal in this, but you
can do it without one using trial and error and the histogram.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)