Disappointing results with Digi-Slave on 880

I purchased the Digi-Slave Deluxe 2000 a few weeks ago for using with my Nikon CoolPix 880. I've finally had an opportunity to play with it the last few days, particularly last night at my son's Cub Scout pack meeting, and I've had very mixed results. In fact, most of my pictures last night were incredibly disappointing. Most came out very dark as if the flash wasn't even firing and I was in a pitch black room. There was a fair amount of available light in the large room we were in, and as far as I could tell the Digi-Slave was firing, but it just didn't seem to be putting out much flash intensity.

I had my 880 in P mode, white balance was set to Speedlight, and ISO was set to 100. I also had the internal flash set to force flash. I tried to always make sure that the flash indicator for the internal flash said it was ready, although I don't think the shutter would have even fired if it weren't since I had it set for force flash. I also put a piece of black slide film over the internal flash as instructed at http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/flash.html in order to block most of the its flash while still being able to trigger the slave flash, and this seems to be working just fine. I mostly alternated between the Manual setting and the red setting for the flash since these are supposed to generate the most powerful flash. However, the intensity of the flash just didn't seem to be there on many of my shots. Many came out almost pitch black, and others were still darker than I thought they should have been. I definitely think I could have achieved better results with just the internal flash, although I would have had to deal with the redeye issues (the main reason I bought the Digi-Slave). I also tried both the 'W' setting and the 'T' setting on the zoom head since I was zooming in on some of these, but it didn't seem to make much, if any, difference. Some of the shots that came out somewhat decent actually looked much better when I viewed them on the LCD than they did when I got them uploaded to my PC and viewed them there.

I've attached some example shots. All came straight out of the camera. The first shot below is almost pitch black; however, it does lighten up some if you run it through auto balance in photo editing software (I did it using Microsoft Photo Editor).

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189633&Sequence=0&res=high

The second shot below was taken just after this of the same thing in Auto mode with the flash turned off using only available light; and, although blurry, it demonstrates that with the available light I should not have had a problem with the flash.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189632&Sequence=0&res=high

The third shot below is also very dark, but again it does lighten up some doing an auto balance.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189630&Sequence=0&res=high

The fourth shot below was taken just after this, and I could tell on it that the flash seemed to fire more intensely. It's still not what I would call great, but definitely better than the one taken just before it.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189629&Sequence=0&res=high

I just don't get what's going on here. Am I doing something wrong, or is it a problem with the camera or the flash?

Could it be a problem with weak batteries in the flash? I thought they were properly charged, but perhaps not since I had taken a fair number of pictures with them a few days before. However, the indicator on the Digi-Slave indicated it was ready to flash; and I would think it would fire at the same intensity regardless of the power in the batteries if it says it's ready. Perhaps that's not a good assumption. I did take some photos with it later when I got home, and it seemed to be working OK. I was getting much better results there than an the scout meeting, but the same thing did happen a time or two. I would add that the shots I took at home were at a much closer distance.

I also noticed that the battery in my camera was starting to get pretty weak, but I wouldn't think that would matter with the Digi-Slave. I would think that all it needs is enough flash to trigger it, and it seemed to be doing this.

What is the effective range of this flash on the highest intensity settings? Maybe I'm just expecting too much out of this, but I doubt that I was much more than 30-40 feet away on some of my shots, and many were probably closer to 15-20 feet; and I still got some very dark shots. Even if the flash wasn't putting out enough light, I would have thought that the pictures would have still come out fairly decent just because there was a fair amount of available light -- I wouldn't have expected them to come out almost pitch black. I've had much better results using the internal flash in auto mode, although again redeye was often a real problem.

A few days ago I had also tried using the Digi-Slave with the camera in Auto mode. The flash seemed to work fairly well (although I was having a hard time not overexposing some of the shots), but there was quite a bit of noise in the pictures. I think this is because Auto mode uses an Auto ISO setting, so I'm assuming it was using an ISO of 200 or 400. That's why I switched to using the P mode so that I could set the ISO to 100 to eliminate noise. Could that be part of the problem?

Anyhow, I'm sorry this had been so long-winded. I know it's going to take some trial and error to figure out what will give me the best results, but right now I'm just very disappointed with my results using this flash and perplexed as to what's going wrong. I'd appreciate any advice or help anyone could give me.

Thanks,

Robert Niesen

--Regards,

Robert Niesen

You need to post smaller images, 56k here...

:O)

Frances.

Frances,

You're right. They looked fairly small on PhotoPoint, but they saved them as .bmp files, which I didn't realize. I didn't know they were that big. I'll repost this with smaller files.

Thanks,

Robert

Frances said:

You need to post smaller images, 56k here...

:O)

Frances.

Click to expand...

Robert, it looks to me like your DigiSlave is not firing. An easy way to test it is to put a colored filter on it and shoot into a mirror. Unfortunately, I had to send my 880 in for repairs, have not been able to run tests with my Digislave, and so can't make recommendations. I'll be following your thread with interest.

Hi Bob,

Seems like they've had your 880 forever (Probably seems that way to you too, huh?). Hope you get it back soon.

I don't know if that's the problem or not. It seemed to be firing. I was pretty sure I could see a flash, and I also thought I could hear the popping sound the flash makes when it fires. It just simply didn't seem to have a lot of "oomph" to it when it would fire -- just didn't seem to be firing with its full intensity. I can certainly try out what you've recommended however.

Now that I'm looking at these images on my PC at home, they actually look a little brighter than they did on my PC at work; but they're still pretty lousy, although the brighter one of the crowd isn't too bad. I had been looking at them on my laptop that's hooked up to a monitor at work, and the worst pictures looked almost completely black. I guess the video card in the laptop just doesn't do too great a job. I'm sure it probably has minimal video memory.

Anyhow, I'm interested in seeing what others might recommend. I also sent an e-mail with these pictures attached to the people at SR, Inc. who make the Digi-Slaves, so I hope I'll hear back from them.

Thanks for responding.

Take care,

Robert

Bob Morrison said:

Robert, it looks to me like your DigiSlave is not firing. An easy
way to test it is to put a colored filter on it and shoot into a
mirror. Unfortunately, I had to send my 880 in for repairs, have
not been able to run tests with my Digislave, and so can't make
recommendations. I'll be following your thread with interest.

Click to expand...

Robert Niesen said:

Seems like they've had your 880 forever (Probably seems that way to
you too, huh?). Hope you get it back soon.

I don't know if that's the problem or not. It seemed to be firing.
I was pretty sure I could see a flash, and I also thought I could
hear the popping sound the flash makes when it fires. It just
simply didn't seem to have a lot of "oomph" to it when it would
fire -- just didn't seem to be firing with its full intensity. I
can certainly try out what you've recommended however.

Now that I'm looking at these images on my PC at home, they
actually look a little brighter than they did on my PC at work; but
they're still pretty lousy, although the brighter one of the crowd
isn't too bad. I had been looking at them on my laptop that's
hooked up to a monitor at work, and the worst pictures looked
almost completely black. I guess the video card in the laptop just
doesn't do too great a job. I'm sure it probably has minimal video
memory.

Anyhow, I'm interested in seeing what others might recommend. I
also sent an e-mail with these pictures attached to the people at
SR, Inc. who make the Digi-Slaves, so I hope I'll hear back from
them.

Thanks for responding.

Take care,

Robert

Bob Morrison said:

Robert, it looks to me like your DigiSlave is not firing. An easy
way to test it is to put a colored filter on it and shoot into a
mirror. Unfortunately, I had to send my 880 in for repairs, have
not been able to run tests with my Digislave, and so can't make
recommendations. I'll be following your thread with interest.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Not sure if the 880 uses a preflash before the actual picture, but this is from the digislave sight.

Digital cameras such as the popular Olympus line and others usually have an inadequate built in flash and lack any facility to use an external flash. Standard slave flash units will not work with most digital cameras because these cameras use a very rapid series of pre-flashes (we're not talking about red-eye reduction). The pre-flashes are used to set the white balance of the camera's CCD chip - not the exposure. A typical slave unit will fire on the first pre-flash it senses while the digital camera captures the image on the last flash. Thus the extra light from the slave does not show up in the digital camera photo.

Robert Niesen said:

I purchased the Digi-Slave Deluxe 2000 a few weeks ago for using
with my Nikon CoolPix 880. I've finally had an opportunity to play
with it the last few days, particularly last night at my son's Cub
Scout pack meeting, and I've had very mixed results. In fact, most
of my pictures last night were incredibly disappointing. Most came
out very dark as if the flash wasn't even firing and I was in a
pitch black room. There was a fair amount of available light in
the large room we were in, and as far as I could tell the
Digi-Slave was firing, but it just didn't seem to be putting out
much flash intensity.

Click to expand...

I do not have the Nikon 880, but I used Digislave units with my Nikon 800.

If there is a compatibility problem with the 880, I won't be able to help. However,
I suspect one of 3 things may be happening, since you are getting some
good flash exposures.

If the batteries in the flash unit are weak, the recycle times can be quite long,
so you would get a good exposure followed by a poor exposure, even though

the flash does fire. Second, if your flash unit has a built-in sensor for exposure
control, you could mess it up if there was something close to the flash to

reflect light back to that sensor (a glint from the camera, or a flash bracket, or
even your hand). The flash output is not controlled by the camera, so it tries

to do its own auto-exposure if it has that feature. The third possibility is that
the flash is out-of-sync with the camera shutter for some reason. It could be
a faulty flash or the camera is not always firing a pre-flash for some reason.

My experience with the Digislave people is very good. I know they will be very
helpful if you suspect the flash is the problem.

Darrell

Robert,

I have an 880 with a Dsf-1s slave (like yours but weaker and selectable firing modes). A few things come to mind.

1. I use NiMH batteries in my flash. The flash will fire weakly if the batteries are low. Every flash is not the same when the batteries need a charge.

2. Are you using the flash as a bounce? I noticed that room appears to have a VERY tall ceiling, and bouncing would be almost impossible. That would leave you with dark pictures.

3. I think the Digi-slaves are almost unusable in auto mode. In that mode the pre-flash is used to set the exposure. If you have something blocking the camera's flash you will get a 400 iso picture.

4. Zoom is a very powerful flash control method. As you zoom in your aperture values get bigger and the effectiveness of the flash gets weaker in A HURRY. In a big room I would use f2.8 (widest angle shot) to get the best coverage.

I've also learned that I can control the flash the best if I leave it on the M (strongest) mode, and compensate with the EV values and zoom.

I know your flash is a little different, but hopefully I gave you something to help....

Good luck,
Eric

Robert Niesen said:

I purchased the Digi-Slave Deluxe 2000 a few weeks ago for using
with my Nikon CoolPix 880. I've finally had an opportunity to play
with it the last few days, particularly last night at my son's Cub
Scout pack meeting, and I've had very mixed results. In fact, most
of my pictures last night were incredibly disappointing. Most came
out very dark as if the flash wasn't even firing and I was in a
pitch black room. There was a fair amount of available light in
the large room we were in, and as far as I could tell the
Digi-Slave was firing, but it just didn't seem to be putting out
much flash intensity.

I had my 880 in P mode, white balance was set to Speedlight, and
ISO was set to 100. I also had the internal flash set to force
flash. I tried to always make sure that the flash indicator for
the internal flash said it was ready, although I don't think the
shutter would have even fired if it weren't since I had it set for
force flash. I also put a piece of black slide film over the
internal flash as instructed at
http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/flash.html in order to block
most of the its flash while still being able to trigger the slave
flash, and this seems to be working just fine. I mostly alternated
between the Manual setting and the red setting for the flash since
these are supposed to generate the most powerful flash. However,
the intensity of the flash just didn't seem to be there on many of
my shots. Many came out almost pitch black, and others were still
darker than I thought they should have been. I definitely think I
could have achieved better results with just the internal flash,
although I would have had to deal with the redeye issues (the main
reason I bought the Digi-Slave). I also tried both the 'W' setting
and the 'T' setting on the zoom head since I was zooming in on some
of these, but it didn't seem to make much, if any, difference.
Some of the shots that came out somewhat decent actually looked
much better when I viewed them on the LCD than they did when I got
them uploaded to my PC and viewed them there.

I've attached some example shots. All came straight out of the
camera. The first shot below is almost pitch black; however, it
does lighten up some if you run it through auto balance in photo
editing software (I did it using Microsoft Photo Editor).

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189633&Sequence=0&res=high

The second shot below was taken just after this of the same thing
in Auto mode with the flash turned off using only available light;
and, although blurry, it demonstrates that with the available light
I should not have had a problem with the flash.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189632&Sequence=0&res=high

The third shot below is also very dark, but again it does lighten
up some doing an auto balance.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189630&Sequence=0&res=high

The fourth shot below was taken just after this, and I could tell
on it that the flash seemed to fire more intensely. It's still not
what I would call great, but definitely better than the one taken
just before it.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189629&Sequence=0&res=high

I just don't get what's going on here. Am I doing something wrong,
or is it a problem with the camera or the flash?

Could it be a problem with weak batteries in the flash? I thought
they were properly charged, but perhaps not since I had taken a
fair number of pictures with them a few days before. However, the
indicator on the Digi-Slave indicated it was ready to flash; and I
would think it would fire at the same intensity regardless of the
power in the batteries if it says it's ready. Perhaps that's not a
good assumption. I did take some photos with it later when I got
home, and it seemed to be working OK. I was getting much better
results there than an the scout meeting, but the same thing did
happen a time or two. I would add that the shots I took at home
were at a much closer distance.

I also noticed that the battery in my camera was starting to get
pretty weak, but I wouldn't think that would matter with the
Digi-Slave. I would think that all it needs is enough flash to
trigger it, and it seemed to be doing this.

What is the effective range of this flash on the highest intensity
settings? Maybe I'm just expecting too much out of this, but I
doubt that I was much more than 30-40 feet away on some of my
shots, and many were probably closer to 15-20 feet; and I still got
some very dark shots. Even if the flash wasn't putting out enough
light, I would have thought that the pictures would have still come
out fairly decent just because there was a fair amount of available
light -- I wouldn't have expected them to come out almost pitch
black. I've had much better results using the internal flash in
auto mode, although again redeye was often a real problem.

A few days ago I had also tried using the Digi-Slave with the
camera in Auto mode. The flash seemed to work fairly well
(although I was having a hard time not overexposing some of the
shots), but there was quite a bit of noise in the pictures. I
think this is because Auto mode uses an Auto ISO setting, so I'm
assuming it was using an ISO of 200 or 400. That's why I switched
to using the P mode so that I could set the ISO to 100 to eliminate
noise. Could that be part of the problem?

Anyhow, I'm sorry this had been so long-winded. I know it's going
to take some trial and error to figure out what will give me the
best results, but right now I'm just very disappointed with my
results using this flash and perplexed as to what's going wrong.
I'd appreciate any advice or help anyone could give me.

Thanks,

Robert Niesen

--
Regards,

Robert Niesen

Click to expand...

Just thought of this,

Make sure on the manual modes that the aperture is set to f2.8 instead of f7.8. The f7.8 would greatly reduce the flash effectiveness.

Eric

eshoe said:

I have an 880 with a Dsf-1s slave (like yours but weaker and
selectable firing modes). A few things come to mind.

1. I use NiMH batteries in my flash. The flash will fire weakly if
the batteries are low. Every flash is not the same when the
batteries need a charge.

2. Are you using the flash as a bounce? I noticed that room
appears to have a VERY tall ceiling, and bouncing would be almost
impossible. That would leave you with dark pictures.

3. I think the Digi-slaves are almost unusable in auto mode. In
that mode the pre-flash is used to set the exposure. If you have
something blocking the camera's flash you will get a 400 iso
picture.

4. Zoom is a very powerful flash control method. As you zoom in
your aperture values get bigger and the effectiveness of the flash
gets weaker in A HURRY. In a big room I would use f2.8 (widest
angle shot) to get the best coverage.

I've also learned that I can control the flash the best if I leave
it on the M (strongest) mode, and compensate with the EV values and
zoom.

I know your flash is a little different, but hopefully I gave you
something to help....

Good luck,
Eric

Robert Niesen said:

I purchased the Digi-Slave Deluxe 2000 a few weeks ago for using
with my Nikon CoolPix 880. I've finally had an opportunity to play
with it the last few days, particularly last night at my son's Cub
Scout pack meeting, and I've had very mixed results. In fact, most
of my pictures last night were incredibly disappointing. Most came
out very dark as if the flash wasn't even firing and I was in a
pitch black room. There was a fair amount of available light in
the large room we were in, and as far as I could tell the
Digi-Slave was firing, but it just didn't seem to be putting out
much flash intensity.

I had my 880 in P mode, white balance was set to Speedlight, and
ISO was set to 100. I also had the internal flash set to force
flash. I tried to always make sure that the flash indicator for
the internal flash said it was ready, although I don't think the
shutter would have even fired if it weren't since I had it set for
force flash. I also put a piece of black slide film over the
internal flash as instructed at
http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/flash.html in order to block
most of the its flash while still being able to trigger the slave
flash, and this seems to be working just fine. I mostly alternated
between the Manual setting and the red setting for the flash since
these are supposed to generate the most powerful flash. However,
the intensity of the flash just didn't seem to be there on many of
my shots. Many came out almost pitch black, and others were still
darker than I thought they should have been. I definitely think I
could have achieved better results with just the internal flash,
although I would have had to deal with the redeye issues (the main
reason I bought the Digi-Slave). I also tried both the 'W' setting
and the 'T' setting on the zoom head since I was zooming in on some
of these, but it didn't seem to make much, if any, difference.
Some of the shots that came out somewhat decent actually looked
much better when I viewed them on the LCD than they did when I got
them uploaded to my PC and viewed them there.

I've attached some example shots. All came straight out of the
camera. The first shot below is almost pitch black; however, it
does lighten up some if you run it through auto balance in photo
editing software (I did it using Microsoft Photo Editor).

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189633&Sequence=0&res=high

The second shot below was taken just after this of the same thing
in Auto mode with the flash turned off using only available light;
and, although blurry, it demonstrates that with the available light
I should not have had a problem with the flash.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189632&Sequence=0&res=high

The third shot below is also very dark, but again it does lighten
up some doing an auto balance.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189630&Sequence=0&res=high

The fourth shot below was taken just after this, and I could tell
on it that the flash seemed to fire more intensely. It's still not
what I would call great, but definitely better than the one taken
just before it.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189629&Sequence=0&res=high

I just don't get what's going on here. Am I doing something wrong,
or is it a problem with the camera or the flash?

Could it be a problem with weak batteries in the flash? I thought
they were properly charged, but perhaps not since I had taken a
fair number of pictures with them a few days before. However, the
indicator on the Digi-Slave indicated it was ready to flash; and I
would think it would fire at the same intensity regardless of the
power in the batteries if it says it's ready. Perhaps that's not a
good assumption. I did take some photos with it later when I got
home, and it seemed to be working OK. I was getting much better
results there than an the scout meeting, but the same thing did
happen a time or two. I would add that the shots I took at home
were at a much closer distance.

I also noticed that the battery in my camera was starting to get
pretty weak, but I wouldn't think that would matter with the
Digi-Slave. I would think that all it needs is enough flash to
trigger it, and it seemed to be doing this.

What is the effective range of this flash on the highest intensity
settings? Maybe I'm just expecting too much out of this, but I
doubt that I was much more than 30-40 feet away on some of my
shots, and many were probably closer to 15-20 feet; and I still got
some very dark shots. Even if the flash wasn't putting out enough
light, I would have thought that the pictures would have still come
out fairly decent just because there was a fair amount of available
light -- I wouldn't have expected them to come out almost pitch
black. I've had much better results using the internal flash in
auto mode, although again redeye was often a real problem.

A few days ago I had also tried using the Digi-Slave with the
camera in Auto mode. The flash seemed to work fairly well
(although I was having a hard time not overexposing some of the
shots), but there was quite a bit of noise in the pictures. I
think this is because Auto mode uses an Auto ISO setting, so I'm
assuming it was using an ISO of 200 or 400. That's why I switched
to using the P mode so that I could set the ISO to 100 to eliminate
noise. Could that be part of the problem?

Anyhow, I'm sorry this had been so long-winded. I know it's going
to take some trial and error to figure out what will give me the
best results, but right now I'm just very disappointed with my
results using this flash and perplexed as to what's going wrong.
I'd appreciate any advice or help anyone could give me.

Thanks,

Robert Niesen

--
Regards,

Robert Niesen

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

The last picture you posted looked pretty good. The closest people were illumnated by the flash. You can't expect that flash to give enough light to subjects more than about 15 ft. There is no why you will fill that huge room with that flash. I think you may be expecting too much. The other pictures must have had a sync problem, etc. The other responses to this post have covered everything I can think of.
-Nick

Well, I played around with this some this morning. I think Bob is right -- the flash was not firing. I took some shots without using the Digi-Slave but with the slide film still over the internal flash, and they looked pretty much like the dark shots I had taken the other night. I could see and hear the internal flash firing, so I'm sure that's what I was experiencing the other night. I was in a nice quiet room this morning, and I hadn't realized just how loud the pop is that the internal flash makes.

Now I just need to figure out why the Digi-Slave was not firing all the time, and perhaps the culprit was weak batteries in it. I put in a fresh set of batteries this morning and then just took the same shot over and over again while holding the camera such that I could see the Digi-Slave flashing, and it flashed every time. I'll just try to always have fresh batteries in it and see if I experience the same problem again.

I also wasn't sure why they all came out so dark when the available light shots with the flash disabled came out plenty bright. I guess there's just a difference between the exposure compensation, shutter speed, etc. in auto mode when it expects a flash and when you've disabled it.

Thanks everyone for your responses.

Regards,

Robert

Robert Niesen said:

Seems like they've had your 880 forever (Probably seems that way to
you too, huh?). Hope you get it back soon.

I don't know if that's the problem or not. It seemed to be firing.
I was pretty sure I could see a flash, and I also thought I could
hear the popping sound the flash makes when it fires. It just
simply didn't seem to have a lot of "oomph" to it when it would
fire -- just didn't seem to be firing with its full intensity. I
can certainly try out what you've recommended however.

Now that I'm looking at these images on my PC at home, they
actually look a little brighter than they did on my PC at work; but
they're still pretty lousy, although the brighter one of the crowd
isn't too bad. I had been looking at them on my laptop that's
hooked up to a monitor at work, and the worst pictures looked
almost completely black. I guess the video card in the laptop just
doesn't do too great a job. I'm sure it probably has minimal video
memory.

Anyhow, I'm interested in seeing what others might recommend. I
also sent an e-mail with these pictures attached to the people at
SR, Inc. who make the Digi-Slaves, so I hope I'll hear back from
them.

Thanks for responding.

Take care,

Robert

Bob Morrison said:

Robert, it looks to me like your DigiSlave is not firing. An easy
way to test it is to put a colored filter on it and shoot into a
mirror. Unfortunately, I had to send my 880 in for repairs, have
not been able to run tests with my Digislave, and so can't make
recommendations. I'll be following your thread with interest.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Randy,

Thanks for your response. The 880 does do a pre-flash, but the Digi-Slave model I bought is specifically designed to fire on the second flash. See my most recent posting. I think it simply was not firing as Bob had suggested.

Regards,

Robert

Randy K said:

Robert Niesen said:

Seems like they've had your 880 forever (Probably seems that way to
you too, huh?). Hope you get it back soon.

I don't know if that's the problem or not. It seemed to be firing.
I was pretty sure I could see a flash, and I also thought I could
hear the popping sound the flash makes when it fires. It just
simply didn't seem to have a lot of "oomph" to it when it would
fire -- just didn't seem to be firing with its full intensity. I
can certainly try out what you've recommended however.

Now that I'm looking at these images on my PC at home, they
actually look a little brighter than they did on my PC at work; but
they're still pretty lousy, although the brighter one of the crowd
isn't too bad. I had been looking at them on my laptop that's
hooked up to a monitor at work, and the worst pictures looked
almost completely black. I guess the video card in the laptop just
doesn't do too great a job. I'm sure it probably has minimal video
memory.

Anyhow, I'm interested in seeing what others might recommend. I
also sent an e-mail with these pictures attached to the people at
SR, Inc. who make the Digi-Slaves, so I hope I'll hear back from
them.

Thanks for responding.

Take care,

Robert

Bob Morrison said:

Robert, it looks to me like your DigiSlave is not firing. An easy
way to test it is to put a colored filter on it and shoot into a
mirror. Unfortunately, I had to send my 880 in for repairs, have
not been able to run tests with my Digislave, and so can't make
recommendations. I'll be following your thread with interest.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Not sure if the 880 uses a preflash before the actual picture, but
this is from the digislave sight.

Digital cameras such as the popular Olympus line and others usually
have an inadequate built in flash and lack any facility to use an
external flash. Standard slave flash units will not work with most
digital cameras because these cameras use a very rapid series of
pre-flashes (we're not talking about red-eye reduction). The
pre-flashes are used to set the white balance of the camera's CCD
chip - not the exposure. A typical slave unit will fire on the
first pre-flash it senses while the digital camera captures the
image on the last flash. Thus the extra light from the slave does
not show up in the digital camera photo.

Click to expand...

Darrell,

Thanks for responding. I suspect the most likely culprit is your first possibility. See my most recent posting under Bob Morrison's thread. I think the flash simply wasn't firing as he had suggested. I thought the Digi-Slave was recycling pretty quickly, but perhaps I wasn't paying as much attention to it as I should have been. I suppose your third possibility could also be the culprit. I guess I just need to play around with this some more and see if I can pinpoint the problem.

Thanks,

Robert

Darrell Spreen said:

Robert Niesen said:

I purchased the Digi-Slave Deluxe 2000 a few weeks ago for using
with my Nikon CoolPix 880. I've finally had an opportunity to play
with it the last few days, particularly last night at my son's Cub
Scout pack meeting, and I've had very mixed results. In fact, most
of my pictures last night were incredibly disappointing. Most came
out very dark as if the flash wasn't even firing and I was in a
pitch black room. There was a fair amount of available light in
the large room we were in, and as far as I could tell the
Digi-Slave was firing, but it just didn't seem to be putting out
much flash intensity.

Click to expand...

I do not have the Nikon 880, but I used Digislave units with my
Nikon 800.
If there is a compatibility problem with the 880, I won't be able
to help. However,
I suspect one of 3 things may be happening, since you are getting some
good flash exposures.

If the batteries in the flash unit are weak, the recycle times can
be quite long,
so you would get a good exposure followed by a poor exposure, even
though
the flash does fire. Second, if your flash unit has a built-in
sensor for exposure
control, you could mess it up if there was something close to the
flash to
reflect light back to that sensor (a glint from the camera, or a
flash bracket, or
even your hand). The flash output is not controlled by the camera,
so it tries
to do its own auto-exposure if it has that feature. The third
possibility is that
the flash is out-of-sync with the camera shutter for some reason.
It could be
a faulty flash or the camera is not always firing a pre-flash for
some reason.

My experience with the Digislave people is very good. I know they
will be very
helpful if you suspect the flash is the problem.

Darrell

Click to expand...

Eric,

Thanks so much for your response. I'm thinking that weak batteries in the flash might be the most likely culprit. See my most recent posting in Bob Morrison's thread. As Bob suggested, I don't think the flash was firing at all.

I was not bouncing the flash, for the very reason you've stated. The room did have a very tall ceiling, so I knew that bouncing the flash would not work.

I don't think I was using Auto mode at all that night. As I mentioned in my original posting, I had used Auto mode a few nights before this; and I was not pleased with the results because of noise in the pictures. That's why I had switched over to P mode.

I had not adjusted the aperture at all. Not sure if P mode lets you do this. I noticed in CSM mode that the lowest aperture seems to be 4.2 on the 880.

I've not really played around with EV compensation at all. Do I need to use a negative EV compensation to lower the brightness? What do you usually set it to?

I also noticed that you can make + - adjustments to the Speedlight setting. What exactly does this do, and do you recommend any particular setting for this?

Again, thanks for taking the time to respond. You've definitely giving me some ideas to play around with.

Regards,

Robert

eshoe said:

I have an 880 with a Dsf-1s slave (like yours but weaker and
selectable firing modes). A few things come to mind.

1. I use NiMH batteries in my flash. The flash will fire weakly if
the batteries are low. Every flash is not the same when the
batteries need a charge.

2. Are you using the flash as a bounce? I noticed that room
appears to have a VERY tall ceiling, and bouncing would be almost
impossible. That would leave you with dark pictures.

3. I think the Digi-slaves are almost unusable in auto mode. In
that mode the pre-flash is used to set the exposure. If you have
something blocking the camera's flash you will get a 400 iso
picture.

4. Zoom is a very powerful flash control method. As you zoom in
your aperture values get bigger and the effectiveness of the flash
gets weaker in A HURRY. In a big room I would use f2.8 (widest
angle shot) to get the best coverage.

I've also learned that I can control the flash the best if I leave
it on the M (strongest) mode, and compensate with the EV values and
zoom.

I know your flash is a little different, but hopefully I gave you
something to help....

Good luck,
Eric

Robert Niesen said:

I purchased the Digi-Slave Deluxe 2000 a few weeks ago for using
with my Nikon CoolPix 880. I've finally had an opportunity to play
with it the last few days, particularly last night at my son's Cub
Scout pack meeting, and I've had very mixed results. In fact, most
of my pictures last night were incredibly disappointing. Most came
out very dark as if the flash wasn't even firing and I was in a
pitch black room. There was a fair amount of available light in
the large room we were in, and as far as I could tell the
Digi-Slave was firing, but it just didn't seem to be putting out
much flash intensity.

I had my 880 in P mode, white balance was set to Speedlight, and
ISO was set to 100. I also had the internal flash set to force
flash. I tried to always make sure that the flash indicator for
the internal flash said it was ready, although I don't think the
shutter would have even fired if it weren't since I had it set for
force flash. I also put a piece of black slide film over the
internal flash as instructed at
http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/flash.html in order to block
most of the its flash while still being able to trigger the slave
flash, and this seems to be working just fine. I mostly alternated
between the Manual setting and the red setting for the flash since
these are supposed to generate the most powerful flash. However,
the intensity of the flash just didn't seem to be there on many of
my shots. Many came out almost pitch black, and others were still
darker than I thought they should have been. I definitely think I
could have achieved better results with just the internal flash,
although I would have had to deal with the redeye issues (the main
reason I bought the Digi-Slave). I also tried both the 'W' setting
and the 'T' setting on the zoom head since I was zooming in on some
of these, but it didn't seem to make much, if any, difference.
Some of the shots that came out somewhat decent actually looked
much better when I viewed them on the LCD than they did when I got
them uploaded to my PC and viewed them there.

I've attached some example shots. All came straight out of the
camera. The first shot below is almost pitch black; however, it
does lighten up some if you run it through auto balance in photo
editing software (I did it using Microsoft Photo Editor).

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189633&Sequence=0&res=high

The second shot below was taken just after this of the same thing
in Auto mode with the flash turned off using only available light;
and, although blurry, it demonstrates that with the available light
I should not have had a problem with the flash.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189632&Sequence=0&res=high

The third shot below is also very dark, but again it does lighten
up some doing an auto balance.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189630&Sequence=0&res=high

The fourth shot below was taken just after this, and I could tell
on it that the flash seemed to fire more intensely. It's still not
what I would call great, but definitely better than the one taken
just before it.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1526260&a=12871419&p=48189629&Sequence=0&res=high

I just don't get what's going on here. Am I doing something wrong,
or is it a problem with the camera or the flash?

Could it be a problem with weak batteries in the flash? I thought
they were properly charged, but perhaps not since I had taken a
fair number of pictures with them a few days before. However, the
indicator on the Digi-Slave indicated it was ready to flash; and I
would think it would fire at the same intensity regardless of the
power in the batteries if it says it's ready. Perhaps that's not a
good assumption. I did take some photos with it later when I got
home, and it seemed to be working OK. I was getting much better
results there than an the scout meeting, but the same thing did
happen a time or two. I would add that the shots I took at home
were at a much closer distance.

I also noticed that the battery in my camera was starting to get
pretty weak, but I wouldn't think that would matter with the
Digi-Slave. I would think that all it needs is enough flash to
trigger it, and it seemed to be doing this.

What is the effective range of this flash on the highest intensity
settings? Maybe I'm just expecting too much out of this, but I
doubt that I was much more than 30-40 feet away on some of my
shots, and many were probably closer to 15-20 feet; and I still got
some very dark shots. Even if the flash wasn't putting out enough
light, I would have thought that the pictures would have still come
out fairly decent just because there was a fair amount of available
light -- I wouldn't have expected them to come out almost pitch
black. I've had much better results using the internal flash in
auto mode, although again redeye was often a real problem.

A few days ago I had also tried using the Digi-Slave with the
camera in Auto mode. The flash seemed to work fairly well
(although I was having a hard time not overexposing some of the
shots), but there was quite a bit of noise in the pictures. I
think this is because Auto mode uses an Auto ISO setting, so I'm
assuming it was using an ISO of 200 or 400. That's why I switched
to using the P mode so that I could set the ISO to 100 to eliminate
noise. Could that be part of the problem?

Anyhow, I'm sorry this had been so long-winded. I know it's going
to take some trial and error to figure out what will give me the
best results, but right now I'm just very disappointed with my
results using this flash and perplexed as to what's going wrong.
I'd appreciate any advice or help anyone could give me.

Thanks,

Robert Niesen

--
Regards,

Robert Niesen

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Nick,

Thanks for your response. See my most recent posting on Bob Morrison's thread. As he suggested, it looks like the flash was not firing at all. The most likely culprit might be weak batteries in the flash. I just need to play around with this some more.

Regards,

Robert

nickm said:

The last picture you posted looked pretty good. The closest people
were illumnated by the flash. You can't expect that flash to give
enough light to subjects more than about 15 ft. There is no why
you will fill that huge room with that flash. I think you may be
expecting too much. The other pictures must have had a sync
problem, etc. The other responses to this post have covered
everything I can think of.
-Nick

Click to expand...

Attached below is a copy of correspondence I had with Larry at SR Inc., makers of the Digi-Slave flashes about this issue. Larry was very helpful and responded quickly to my e-mails.

I also thought I'd pass this along. I found a flash bracket to use with this at Best Buy that I like pretty well. Here's the link for it:

http://www.bestbuy.com/ ... ...sp?e=11001202&m=82&cat=623&scat=632

It's pretty compact, so it doesn't take up a lot of room in my camera bag; and it's compact size works well with the small size of the camera. It also has two hotshoe-type mounts that allow you to mount the flash for both landscape or portrait oriented shots. I did discover as Bob Morrison has pointed out on these forums that I had to put a piece of tape over the metal base of the hotshoe mount to keep it from shorting the flash. It would not fire unless I did this. I just used a piece of gaffers tape.

-----------------------------

If you are in one of the automatic settings, the recharge time won't be as long. In the manual setting, it will take longer, especially when the batteries are getting low. This could lead to some shots being missed.

Larry

"Niesen, Robert" wrote:
Larry,
Thanks for getting back to me on this. Sorry for the problems with your
e-mail. I think the photo files I attached were probably just too big. I
also posed this question about my problems with the Digi-Slave on the Nikon
Talk Forum at
http://www.dpreview.com/ ... ....asp?forum=1007&page=1&message=1069517
(also at
http://www.dpreview.com/ ... ....asp?forum=1007&page=1&message=1069609
with smaller images). I attached the same photos I sent you to this posting
if you'd like to look at them.

I was pretty sure I could see a flash, and I also thought I could hear the
popping sound the flash makes when it fires. It just simply didn't seem to
have a lot of "oomph" to it when it would fire -- just didn't seem to be
firing with its full intensity.

I got several responses to my posting. One person thought that it looked
like the flash was not firing, so I played around with this some this
morning. Sure enough, I don't think that the flash was firing. I took some
shots without using the Digi-Slave but with the slide film still over the
internal flash, and they looked pretty much like the dark shots I had taken
the other night. I could see and hear the internal flash firing, so I'm sure
that's what I was experiencing the other night. I was in a nice quiet room
this morning, and I hadn't realized just how loud the pop is that the
internal flash makes. I had apparently mistaken the slight flash and
popping sound of the internal flash as having come from the Digi-Slave
flash. I'm pretty sure now that the Digi-Slave was indeed not firing.

I do have the flash mounted on a flash bracket. I had seen postings on the
Nikon Talk Forum at dpreview.com stating that the metal on the flash mount
would short out the Digi-Slave. Sure enough, I experienced the same problem
when I first tried it. Putting a piece of gaffers tape over the metal base
of the mount solved this problem.

Also, the 880 does fire a pre-flash. I did get the Mode 2 version of the
Deluxe 2000, so I don't think that's the problem unless there's just
something faulty about my particular flash's light sensor or with the camera
itself.

I just need to figure out why the Digi-Slave was not firing all the time,
and perhaps the culprit was weak batteries in it. I put in a fresh set of
batteries in the Digi-Slave this morning (I also put a fresh battery in the
camera) and then just took the same shot over and over again while holding
the camera off to my side such that I could see whether the Digi-Slave was
flashing, and it flashed every time. This is very similar to what you
suggested doing below. I'll just try to always have fresh batteries in it
and see if I experience the same problem again. I'm pretty sure the
indicator on the Digi-Slave had indicated that it was ready the other night
(although perhaps I had failed to check this each time), but maybe there
just really wasn't always enough juice left in the batteries to make it
flash every time (actually that night it was not flashing most of the time).
Do you think this could have been the problem? I did take some more photos
that same night after I got home without having changed the batteries in the
flash or the camera, and the flash worked all but maybe once or twice. That
got me even more perplexed.

Anyhow, any advice or theories you might have on this would be greatly
appreciated. Also I'll keep playing around with this as I can, and I'll let
you know if I experience the same problems again.

Thanks,

Robert Niesen

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [ [email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2001 10:25 AM
To: Niesen, Robert
Subject: Re: Poor results with Digi-Slave Deluxe 2000

Mr. Niesen,

The Deluxe 2000 should be giving you ample power in the ranges you
mentioned. Let's first try some troubleshooting methods and make sure the
flash is working correctly.

Are you mounting the 2000 on a bracket or tripod? If so, be sure to cover
any metal on the flash mount with duct or electrical tape. If the 2000
touches any metal, it will short out and not perform correctly.

I don't know much about the settings on the on the CP 880, but I believe it
always fires a pre-flash (I'm not 100% sure on this, however). You did
receive a Deluxe 2000 Mode 2?

Try this test: Set the Deluxe 2000 on a table in the Manual setting and
take a picture of it with the CP 880. When you check the picture, the
Deluxe 2000 should be firing in the shot (it should completely white out
the picture). If you can see the Deluxe 2000 in the picture and it is not
firing, something is wrong with the flash.

Let me know how your test goes. Please don't send any more pictures,
however. For some reason, they just jammed my e-mail and would not come
through.

Larry
SR Inc.

Looks like the link to the flash bracket got messed up, so here it is again:

http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11001202&m=82&cat=623&scat=632

Regards,

Robert

Another contributing factor nobody else has mentioned (I think) is your setting of ISO 100. When shooting with my Digiflash, I was surprised at how much of a difference there was when I went from 100 to 200.

Bob,

How bad is the noise using an ISO of 200?

Regards,

Robert

Bob Morrison said:

Another contributing factor nobody else has mentioned (I think) is
your setting of ISO 100. When shooting with my Digiflash, I was
surprised at how much of a difference there was when I went from
100 to 200.

Click to expand...

Robert Niesen said:

How bad is the noise using an ISO of 200?

Click to expand...

Not bad--I don't have to turn down my hearing aids. Seriously, not at all noticeable to me in 5 x 7 prints. Short exposure time of the flash helps, I think.
P.S. your thread is now HOT; congrats.