Owner`s manual

B.2. FLASH TEST – ADI/PRE-FLASH/BOUNCE/WIRELESS 43
may see, the camera was badly tricked by the fluorescent lighting in the room and the picture “24-85
Preflash 5600 Vertical” is severely underexposed, though the flash still provided some weak light.
:-((.
If we accept the sample picture, “28-80D ADI 5600” as perfectly exposed one, then the 4–segment
metering comes the best after it with about 1/2 overexposure regardless the lens flash combination
used. With the pre-flash metering results are practically unpredictable if a non- D lens is used - in
some cases it gives heavy overexposure (like in “24–85 Preflash 5X00” files) or shows bad underex-
posure (see the previous comment). With the D-lens even non-D 5400 showed similar results to 4–
segment metering.in the pre-flash mode.
In the wireless mode results should be interpreted the following way: the first flash in the name
stands to the left of the camera while the second one stands to its right. Numbers in parenthesis
indicate the ratio power for each flash. “ctrl” means “Control”, “slv” means “slave” for the pictures
where one of the flashguns was used as a control for another. For getting this work I made a trick
with the OS1100 filling in the whole on the shoe. But as long as the flashes were relatively close to
the subject (I think less than 1 meter) the results in this mode are contradictory to what it should be
in reality— the control flash, even set to (1) ratio power overexposes it’s side of the picture, though it
should be way around. Another note: when the 5600 acts as a controller the camera does not give an
OK signal, though the pictures were apparently exposed properly. With the 5400 set to the controller
everything works as it should and the camera gives OK signals. I think that this is understandable, as
long as the manual for the 5600 warns against using the 5600 as a controller if a non-D flash is used
as a remote because the latter won’t fire. Well, in my tests the 5400 fired all right, though without
OK signal after the shot.
The built-in flash works in fact as a real wireless controller, so it is possible to use 1:2 ratio between
two remote units. Though the it works the best with the 5600 set to (2) and 5400 set to (1). With
reversed setting the effect of the ratio is much less prominent, but this way it is possible to play with
lighting in a more flexible way, IMHO. When both flashes are set to the equal power (i.e. without
any ratio, just plain wireless mode) they provide equal illumination.
> Thanks for posting the results of your flash test, Marat.
> My conclusion is that, contrary to what has been stated
> earlier and often on this e-group, Minolta flash results
> are very unpredictable unless using a D lens.
Yes, they are. Unpredictable they become only with the pre-flash and a non-D lens. Now, as long
as I don’t have a D-lens, I have switched the flash metering to the 4-segment one - at least it gives very
consistent and predictable results, though it tends to overexpose a bit. But still the 4- segment metering is
much better than the centerweighted one in all Minolta cameras prior to the 9...
Table B.4: Flash experiment: 24–85 lens
# picture # picture
24–85 Bounce 5400 24–85 Bounce 5600
continued on next page. . .