Last night was my granddaughter's 8th grade graduation ceremony. Since I had
no knowledge of the place or where I might be positioned with respect to the
action at any given time I decided that shooting auto mode flash might allow me
to react to changing conditions a little faster than my normal manual mode
shooting. My Canyon 540EZ has a 7 stop manual range but no flash controlled
auto mode. The T-32 has only full and 1/4 power but does have an auto mode.
So the 540EZ stayed home and the T-32 got assigned to the flash bracket.
In a nutshell I was very disappointed. Before the ceremony started I
approached the stage and podium as closely as I thought I'd be allowed which
was about 25 feet (8 meters). I had the T-32 set for ISO 400 and aperture f/8.
My test shot showed that I actually needed f/5.6 on the camera. To make a
long story short, long before the night was over I ultimately discovered that,
with no changes to the flash setting, I was forced to apply manual exposure
corrections by using from f/5.6 to f/16 on the camera depending on the
distance. I think I'd have been better off with the 540EZ in manual mode.
This was very surprising. I was prepared for auto mode to make 1 stop errors
which I could easily correct in post processing but I wasn't prepared for 3
stop errors or a 4 stop range from low to high.
Anybody have similar results with a T-32? My guess is that it would have been
fairly well on the mark had I been shooting in a modest size room with a low
ceiling. But I really did think it would do better than it did. Faulty T-32?
I have 5 of them so can try the experiment again but not in the same venue.
Dr. Flash
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