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Wedding panic with the D300 (& solution)

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Jean Ricket

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At the signing ceremony just before the main wedding ceremony, my spouse's D300 (with Sigma DG500 in the hot shoe) started taking pictures at its own weird settings, disregarding the shutter speed and ISO it was set up for.

He was getting 1/6th second shutter speed instead of 1/60+, even with the ready light on the flash indicating OK to shoot. The ISO jumped to 1000, even though adjustable ISO was turned off and the camera was set to 400.

The camera had taken about 50 pictures with flash just fine, and now the main ceremony was coming up. Camera battery indicated fully charged. Rebooted--shut off the D300, took out & put back the battery. Couldn't get the camera to stop choosing its own crazy settings (which would give fuzzy pictures.)

Flash of insight: Replace flash batteries! That solved the problem.

The flash batteries were Ni-MH rechargeable AA's that were fresh and should have given 100+ shots, but, obviously, they weren't OK. And the D300 was apparently accommodating its settings to the amount of light that the flash could deliver. Bummer. It would have been better if the camera had indicated "flash not sufficient" or "turn off flash" or "reset without using flash" or something to alert us to where the problem was.

My spouse lost about 15 pictures but was ready for the main ceremony with the D300 doing fine again. The new batteries lasted for about 250 pictures.

Lucky we had plenty of batteries and they weren't all bad, but I had not heard of such crazy behavior for the D300 and wonder whether that could be fixed with an update in software. At least, we know to be alert for this quirk of the camera now, and if someone else's D300 starts shooting at 1/6 second and ISO 1000, change the flash batteries.

Has anyone else had this behavior?

-- JeanR
 
Interesting post Jean!

This may explain some of the inconsistencies that I have had with flash shooting (at times).

I wonder how many wedding pros use a battery pack as opposed to just having the 4 in the SB800.

Cheers
Allan

--
http://www.pbase.com/thrumyeyes
 
NiMH AA's always get weired when one of them is discharged a bit more. They also begin loosing power as soon as you take them off the charger.

I have always had bad luck with them no matter what kind I used.
I know others have good luch with NiMH rechargeables, but not I.

I use a Quantum Battery 1+ and a Quantum battery 1+ compact.

Nothing but great recharge times and flawless use.

I purchased the top batteries from Thomas distributing and a charger from them also. Pain in the but changing batteries in the heat of battle at a wedding.

I love this baby, it screws under the camera into the tripod socket and gives me about 220 pops with a SB-800 and flip-it on. This is more than I got with 5 AA's in the SB-800

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/185551-REG/Quantum_Instruments_QB1C_Battery_1_Compact_with.html

Another great thing is that when you have a moment of down time you can keep it connected to the camera and just plug in the charger to top it off.

I can do an entire reception this way on the same battery and never disconnect from the camera. Always ready at a moments notice.

--
Sam
http://www.samjsternphotography.com
 
Never experienced anything like that with my SB-600 or SB-800, even with flash batteries going to the end (just took more time to recharge, nothing else).

Thanks for sharing anyway.

Saludos!

--
Please, excuse my poor english...
 
Hi Jean,

since you are using a 3rd party flash, the camera is probably not able to read the flash battery state in the flash. So I doubt a firmware fix from Nikon would be forthcoming. Remember Sigma has to reverse engineer the flash systems of all the major manufacturers, and may not have gotten everything quite right. I had a 500DG Super on my Pentax K10D, and was never quite sure whether the flash problems I experienced were caused by the flash or the camera. I finally determined it was a combination of both. When I switched to Nikon, I bit the bullet and got the SB800. Absolutely the right move, this flash is phenomenal.

Because of the fast self discharge of NiMH batteries, I started using Sanyo Enloops in my flashes, and charge them in a Maha charger. I recondition them about once a month. They have a lower specific output them your typical NiMH 2500 batteries, but holding their charge longer makes up the difference. I get about 250-300 flashes per set.

Hope this helps
--
Rosco
My Advise is always free. So take it at it's face value :-)
http://www.pbase.com/roscot
 
i agree about the sanyo batteries - but I recently did an outdoor wedding where every shot had to use fill flash & I got about twice that with an SB600!
 
how many shots you get is going to be tied to the average output power you use. In TTL-BL mode, you should get many more shots, because in average use in this mode, the flash fires at reduced power.
--
Rosco
My Advise is always free. So take it at it's face value :-)
http://www.pbase.com/roscot
 
Interesting testimony!

I never got this problem but I try to make great attention to my batteries charge.

I recently bought a La Crosse Technology RS900 charger where I can control very precisely the batteries charge. It very useful with the 5 batteries of the SB-800 flashs.

---------------------------
Nikon D300
Tamron 17-50 f/2.8
Sigma 50-150 f/2.8
Nikon DX VR 18-200
Nikon SB800 (x2)

My blog (in french):
http://le-blog-photo.blogspot.com/
 
Alan,

it is not heavy or awkward at all.

It does not weight more than 5 AA's.

It also has a status light to tell how much power is left.

I have 3 of these. They have all worked flawlessly for a few years now.

--
Sam
http://www.samjsternphotography.com
 
Why are people blaming batteries for an obviously faulty (or poorly designed) flash unit?

The problem is clear cut - get that flash unit replaced, preferably with something from Nikon that is guaranteed to work with that camera. I also suggest checking the camera settings because I find it really hard to believe anything can make it shoot ISO 1000 when it is set to 400 if Auto_ISO is not enabled.

The slow shutter speed sounds like the camera not seeing the flash every now and then, metering and shooting as if it wasn't there.

--
Save pixels, please trim your follow-ups and don't quote attached images.
 
Jean .. I'm with Twisted on this .. if I were you .. I'll try contact cleaner first ... you gotta clean your contacts .. happened to me before on my D200+SB800 combination ... the spray type should do :-) .. good luck!
 
Here's another 'twist' on this issue. You gotta always check your TTL locking shoe at the camera and flash. The little locking handle can get knocked over to the 'unlock' position and the shoe can slip just a little off the hot shoe.

This will cause all kinds of havoc with the flash because it is not communicating with the camera in TTL any longer.
--
Marvin
 
Yes,its happned with me when I was shooting a funtion.I was using 383 flash on D300 with hydride 2900mah rechargeable batteries. the shutter speed went up1000 from 200, some picture were half black. I was wonder how camera can change shutter speed in M mode. Thanks for information.I wilol allert in future.
 
I have never had the problem stated by the OP. But, I rarely use AAs, either disposables or rechargables. I use the Al Jacobs Black Box, which delivers 1000+ flashes per charge! I carry it on the shoulder, and it is not that bad. I even got my very smallish assistant to carry one. I also use two of them to power SB800s on stands to fill dark rooms and for portrait work.
http://www.aljacobs.com/THE%20BLACK%20BOX.htm

--
JohnE

 
Hi and many thanks to Twisted & Jeeb & other thoughtful contributors:

We are thinking about sending back the flash & haven't decided yet. New batteries did fix it at the moment for us, so, we're gathering our thoughts...

It was beyond amazing to us to see that ISO 1000 appear & not let itself be reset. Reg looked at it, then let me look at it, then we looked together, scrolled through the menus, looked in the Index in the manual--spent precious shooting minutes getting nowhere. That was probably the weirdest occurrence.

The slow shutter speed could be explained by your (Twisted's) scenario also I would think. I'm just guessing, and I wonder what the Sony engineers would be able to tell us. Slow shutter speed by a camera reacting to something odd elsewhere doesn't seem so weird to me--extremely annoying without an error message, but not totally weird. The lock onto ISO 1000 in non-auto mode just blew my mind--had never heard of such an odd change before. Yet both changes were strange, and who is to say which took the prize. I was just glad to get rolling while there was still action to photograph.

As to contact cleaner, if that was the cause, I wouldn't think different batteries would fix it. (Can't ever have contacts too clean, though.)

I was using an SB800 for the first time and did notice the little locking knob, but Reg's Sigma didn't have that knob and it was his setup that experienced the odd changes; the Sigma had a screw-down tightener, which was tightened.

I hope I don't have any more interesting odd camera behaviors and I hope you (all) don't either, but I will appreciative of Forum help as needed.

Thanks,
Jean
 
Just a question, I've heard that introducing heat will add noise to your photos, do you find that this set-up introduces heat to the unit from the bottom? if so, have you noticed any more noise than usual?

Thank you
Doods
http://www.dtanabe.multiply.com
 
My SB800 starts doing very funny things with no warning when the NIMH batteries go low. Very dark photos etc I replace them and it's fine. Using the fifth battery helps a lot but it's a pain to charge five (though the fifth battery holder replaces that flimsy door and is much more secure).

Roll on, SB900.
 
What's more, you can't expect Nikon's camera to be able to diagnose and relate to the user a problem with batteries in Sigma's reverse-engineered flash. Now, if you'd been using a Nikon flash, you'd perhaps be justified in expecting some kind of indication the problem lay with the flash, but otherwise...

Anyway, at least you figured it out and got the problem solved without ruining the wedding.

It's sort of like
Jean Ricket said:
At the signing ceremony just before the main wedding ceremony, my
spouse's D300 (with Sigma DG500 in the hot shoe) started taking
pictures at its own weird settings, disregarding the shutter speed
and ISO it was set up for.

He was getting 1/6th second shutter speed instead of 1/60+, even with
the ready light on the flash indicating OK to shoot. The ISO jumped
to 1000, even though adjustable ISO was turned off and the camera was
set to 400.

The camera had taken about 50 pictures with flash just fine, and now
the main ceremony was coming up. Camera battery indicated fully
charged. Rebooted--shut off the D300, took out & put back the
battery. Couldn't get the camera to stop choosing its own crazy
settings (which would give fuzzy pictures.)

Flash of insight: Replace flash batteries! That solved the problem.

The flash batteries were Ni-MH rechargeable AA's that were fresh and
should have given 100+ shots, but, obviously, they weren't OK. And
the D300 was apparently accommodating its settings to the amount of
light that the flash could deliver. Bummer. It would have been better
if the camera had indicated "flash not sufficient" or "turn off
flash" or "reset without using flash" or something to alert us to
where the problem was.

My spouse lost about 15 pictures but was ready for the main ceremony
with the D300 doing fine again. The new batteries lasted for about
250 pictures.

Lucky we had plenty of batteries and they weren't all bad, but I had
not heard of such crazy behavior for the D300 and wonder whether that
could be fixed with an update in software. At least, we know to be
alert for this quirk of the camera now, and if someone else's D300
starts shooting at 1/6 second and ISO 1000, change the flash
batteries.

Has anyone else had this behavior?

-- JeanR
Click to expand...
--
- -
Kabe Luna

http://www.garlandcary.com
 
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