A Sony TTL flash question

I have what may be a really dumb question. I get the feeling that I have really overlooked something.


I shoot Sony A6500 and NEX7. All of my flash work is done with Buff Einsteins and obviously there is nothing TTL about this setup. I am curious about TTL that I'm thinking of a speedlight for situations where studio strobes are not practial. In my film days TTL flash meant that I could set my x-sync shutter speed and then select any aperture and the TTL would do the rest. After reading the owners manuals for both cameras, I came away with the impression that TTL is something entirely different now. From what I can see, (please correct me if I'm wrong, I hope I am) the only way to access TTL is by putting the camera into full auto and thus giving up control of both aperture and iso. Is this correct? The 'auto flash' setting in camera is completely greyed out for any mode but full auto. If I go to aperture priority will the system automatically set sync and then adjust flash output? Is there a way to set up for TTL that still allows me to select aperture and iso? If full auto is the only way to access it then I have to question, what is the point of having TTL flash if you can't control anything for creativity? I wish Sony manuals were more comprehensive.

TTL will work with PASM as long as you don't have any other settings turned that may block it. You will need to check your manual , but things like electronic shutter, continuous frame in drive mode afc etc can all stop flash working.

Labe said:

TTL will work with PASM as long as you don't have any other settings turned that may block it. You will need to check your manual , but things like electronic shutter, continuous frame in drive mode afc etc can all stop flash working.

Click to expand...

Good ideas. I just checked electronic shutter and drive mode. Both are set correctly. Autoflash is still greyed out. I can only acccess fill, slow or rear sync. I have never seen it accessible in any mode other than full auto. The Sony manual is a bit of a joke. Any other settings you suggest that I check on?

Dr_Love said:

Labe said:

TTL will work with PASM as long as you don't have any other settings turned that may block it. You will need to check your manual , but things like electronic shutter, continuous frame in drive mode afc etc can all stop flash working.

Click to expand...

Good ideas. I just checked electronic shutter and drive mode. Both are set correctly. Autoflash is still greyed out. I can only acccess fill, slow or rear sync. I have never seen it accessible in any mode other than full auto. The Sony manual is a bit of a joke. Any other settings you suggest that I check on?

Click to expand...

Fill flash , slow and rear all can use ttl. Auto flash is just so you don't have to pop the flash up ( if using pop up ) or if using flashgun the camera decides if flash is or is not needed.

in PASM you make the decision and have to turn flash on off yourself . Just select fill flash and turn flashgun when needed or leave it off

Labe said:

Dr_Love said:

Labe said:

TTL will work with PASM as long as you don't have any other settings turned that may block it. You will need to check your manual , but things like electronic shutter, continuous frame in drive mode afc etc can all stop flash working.

Click to expand...

Good ideas. I just checked electronic shutter and drive mode. Both are set correctly. Autoflash is still greyed out. I can only acccess fill, slow or rear sync. I have never seen it accessible in any mode other than full auto. The Sony manual is a bit of a joke. Any other settings you suggest that I check on?

Click to expand...

Fill flash , slow and rear all can use ttl. Auto flash is just so you don't have to pop the flash up ( if using pop up ) or if using flashgun the camera decides if flash is or is not needed.

in PASM you make the decision and have to turn flash on off yourself . Just select fill flash and turn flashgun when needed or leave it off

Click to expand...

This is where my problem is. If I go to Aperture priority, the flash will set the sync speed however it does not seem to vary the power output at all. If I shoot at f1.8 vs f22 you can see the difference significantly. There is no ttl control going on here at all. If ttl was functioning then both shots should look the same by the camera adjusting the light output regardless of aperture selected. I'm feeling very lost as none of this makes any sense.

Dr_Love said:

Labe said:

Dr_Love said:

Labe said:

TTL will work with PASM as long as you don't have any other settings turned that may block it. You will need to check your manual , but things like electronic shutter, continuous frame in drive mode afc etc can all stop flash working.

Click to expand...

Good ideas. I just checked electronic shutter and drive mode. Both are set correctly. Autoflash is still greyed out. I can only acccess fill, slow or rear sync. I have never seen it accessible in any mode other than full auto. The Sony manual is a bit of a joke. Any other settings you suggest that I check on?

Click to expand...

Fill flash , slow and rear all can use ttl. Auto flash is just so you don't have to pop the flash up ( if using pop up ) or if using flashgun the camera decides if flash is or is not needed.

in PASM you make the decision and have to turn flash on off yourself . Just select fill flash and turn flashgun when needed or leave it off

Click to expand...

This is where my problem is. If I go to Aperture priority, the flash will set the sync speed however it does not seem to vary the power output at all. If I shoot at f1.8 vs f22 you can see the difference significantly. There is no ttl control going on here at all. If ttl was functioning then both shots should look the same by the camera adjusting the light output regardless of aperture selected. I'm feeling very lost as none of this makes any sense.

Click to expand...

Is the flash itself in ttl mode ? Does it have all the tiny contacts at the front edge to connect on the a6000. If not then only manual flash will be available.

Labe said:

Dr_Love said:

Labe said:

Dr_Love said:

Labe said:

TTL will work with PASM as long as you don't have any other settings turned that may block it. You will need to check your manual , but things like electronic shutter, continuous frame in drive mode afc etc can all stop flash working.

Click to expand...

Good ideas. I just checked electronic shutter and drive mode. Both are set correctly. Autoflash is still greyed out. I can only acccess fill, slow or rear sync. I have never seen it accessible in any mode other than full auto. The Sony manual is a bit of a joke. Any other settings you suggest that I check on?

Click to expand...

Fill flash , slow and rear all can use ttl. Auto flash is just so you don't have to pop the flash up ( if using pop up ) or if using flashgun the camera decides if flash is or is not needed.

in PASM you make the decision and have to turn flash on off yourself . Just select fill flash and turn flashgun when needed or leave it off

Click to expand...

This is where my problem is. If I go to Aperture priority, the flash will set the sync speed however it does not seem to vary the power output at all. If I shoot at f1.8 vs f22 you can see the difference significantly. There is no ttl control going on here at all. If ttl was functioning then both shots should look the same by the camera adjusting the light output regardless of aperture selected. I'm feeling very lost as none of this makes any sense.

Click to expand...

Is the flash itself in ttl mode ? Does it have all the tiny contacts at the front edge to connect on the a6000. If not then only manual flash will be available.

Click to expand...

I do understand that I need a dedicated flash. I'm experimenting with an older flash that uses the old Minolta shoe. It is designed for Sony. It says TTL right on the flash and has no controls other than on/off. It came from BH and is just a cheapie. In full auto the TTL works just fine, but only in full auto. I want to shoot aperture priority ideally.

Sounds like an old auto flash. (Which only works in auto mode)

You need a modern flashgun with the ability to change settings both on flash and body and your 6500 needs a flash with these contacts to access ttl in PASM modes.

.

Labe said:

Sounds like an old auto flash. (Which only works in auto mode)

You need a modern flashgun with the ability to change settings both on flash and body and your 6500 needs a flash with these contacts to access ttl in PASM modes.

.

Click to expand...

I think you may be right. The old Minolta shoe only has 4 contacts. I knew there was more to it than what I was finding. I wonder if that means that the NEX7 can only use ttl in full auto? It still seems strange. You would think that the older camera would have still offered a ttl option outside of the auto mode. I suspect you are correct in that it is a 'low tech' older flash and something from Sony would work correctly. Thank you for all your input.

Dr_Love said:

If I go to Aperture priority, the flash will set the sync speed however it does not seem to vary the power output at all. If I shoot at f1.8 vs f22 you can see the difference significantly. There is no ttl control going on here at all.

Click to expand...

There might be good reasons for that, even with a correctly functioning system. (If there really is no TTL happening, significantly is the wrong word. A difference of more than 7 stops is more like night and day.)

Member said:

I do understand that I need a dedicated flash. I'm experimenting with an older flash that uses the old Minolta shoe. It is designed for Sony. It says TTL right on the flash and has no controls other than on/off. It came from BH and is just a cheapie. In full auto the TTL works just fine, but only in full auto. I want to shoot aperture priority ideally.

Click to expand...

Be very specific. What is this older cheapie flash from B&H? It might have been designed to support TTL for film cameras rather than digital cameras. The requirements are different.

sybersitizen said:

Dr_Love said:

If I go to Aperture priority, the flash will set the sync speed however it does not seem to vary the power output at all. If I shoot at f1.8 vs f22 you can see the difference significantly. There is no ttl control going on here at all.

Click to expand...

There might be good reasons for that, even with a correctly functioning system. (If there really is no TTL happening, significantly is the wrong word. A difference of more than 7 stops is more like night and day.)

sybersitizen said:

I do understand that I need a dedicated flash. I'm experimenting with an older flash that uses the old Minolta shoe. It is designed for Sony. It says TTL right on the flash and has no controls other than on/off. It came from BH and is just a cheapie. In full auto the TTL works just fine, but only in full auto. I want to shoot aperture priority ideally.

Click to expand...

Be very specific. What is this older cheapie flash from B&H? It might have been designed to support TTL for film cameras rather than digital cameras. The requirements are different.

Click to expand...

It's a Bower purchased in 2013. I think Labe nailed it in the fact that as a flash goes, it's just not advanced enough. As long as I can confirm that ttl works in modes other than full auto then I feel more confident investing in a decent speedlight. Most of my work is with studio strobes so the speedlights have been a low priority until now. Thanks for the input. I'm just glad that I now have two people confirming that the ttl will work in PASM. It made no sense to me that it wouldn't. It didn't occur to me that it could be the flash when the camera it was to be used with was a year older than the flash. Feeling much more confident moving forward now.

I think that you will find that your Minolta/Sony flashgun is not compatible because Sony changed the mount for their latest cameras. As previously stated the gun foot needs those tiny contacts on the foot.

You are not at fault - Sony is - for changing to a foot with so many contacts.

No other firm has done so , the previous Sony/Minolta foot was similar to all the

other makes , Nikon Canon etc....

Bob

Dr_Love said:

...The old Minolta shoe only has 4 contacts.

Click to expand...

Actually, Nikon, Pentax, and four-thirds do sync/TTL/HSS over only 4 contacts. Canon and Fuji do it over five.

The MI hotshoe is a multi-interface hotshoe. Only about a half dozen of the pins are for flash usage, the others are for microphones and viewfinders, etc. Multiple interfaces.

AFAIK (and you might get better information from the Sony E-mount area folks than from this Canon/MFT/Fuji shooter) the old Minolta-shoe flashes have full function on the MI hotshoe if used with an appropriate adapter. You just have to determine if the flash you have is film era or digital era. 2013 sounds like digital to me so it should be compatible with TTL/HSS if spec'd as such for Sony. Of course, with cheapie 3rd-parties, nothing's really a given.

In addition your problem with "Auto flash" menu selection is, I think, due to a misunderstanding. "Auto flash" does not mean TTL on the flash. It means telling the camera you want it to decide when to use flash. Naturally, this is only going to be good with Auto mode. The PSAM modes typically assume you want to make that kind of decision for yourself.

Also, I think there's a vocabulary overlap thing going on. If you're used to much older speedlight tech, the old "Auto" mode you could find on speedlights is also not TTL. The old Auto modes used an autothyristor sensor on the flash, and you still had to dial in the ISO and aperture settings you were using into the flash to get it to work right, since the camera isn't talking to the flash other than to give the sync signal. That's not TTL, either.

TTL is where your flash talks to your camera, and the camera tells the flash to send out a small "preburst" of light that it can meter through-the-lens (TTL). Based on the metering reading it gets back, the camera's autoexposure system can then automatically set the flash's power level to where it thinks the result is good. So the flash does go off twice for every shot.

Setting TTL/HSS for most camera systems can be done on either the body via external flash control menus or on the flash itself but I have no idea how the Sony cameras handle this.

forest m said:

You are not at fault - Sony is - for changing to a foot with so many contacts.

No other firm has done so , the previous Sony/Minolta foot was similar to all the

other makes , Nikon Canon etc....

Click to expand...

Um. No. The Minolta iISO hotshoe was also a serious outlier when it came to flash feet/hotshoes, because it was non-ISO compliant and nobody else's flash foot could fit their hotshoe.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IISO_flash_shoe

It's also incredibly ironic that the issue continues even with their so-called "ISO" multi-interface hotshoe. Because of the contacts on the front, the MI hotshoe is deeper than everybody else's, so if you put someone's flash on it, it will sit too far forward, and the sync pin won't touch the sync contact. [facepalm].

forest m said:

I think that you will find that your Minolta/Sony flashgun is not compatible because Sony changed the mount for their latest cameras. As previously stated the gun foot needs those tiny contacts on the foot.

Click to expand...

Actually, there are Minolta-to-MI hotshoe adapters that do make them compatible. The issue is whether the OP's Bower can actually do the current digital version of Sony's TTL communication. Without knowing the model, none of us could tell him; especially since Bower is a generic rebranding label. The actual manufacturer could be anyone.

Also, I'm not exactly sure how the OP is managing to fire an Minolta iISO speedlight from an A6000 if he doesn't have one. If he's using a iISO->ISO single-pin adapter (or other adapter that only has pins on the bottom of the foot) that would definitely explain why there's no TTL, since the preflash communication needs the MI contacts on the front edge.

forest m said:

I think that you will find that your Minolta/Sony flashgun is not compatible because Sony changed the mount for their latest cameras. As previously stated the gun foot needs those tiny contacts on the foot.

Click to expand...

The Minolta flashes designed for digital cameras and all Sony IISO mount flashes have FULL compatibility on the newer cameras, when the correct adapter is used. Earlier Minolta flashes used a different protocol and do not give TTL control. 3rd party flashes are hit and miss, if it is an older model I wouldn’t be to hopeful.

Dr_Love said:

Member said:

sybersitizen wrote:
...
Be very specific. What is this older cheapie flash from B&H? It might have been designed to support TTL for film cameras rather than digital cameras. The requirements are different.

Click to expand...

It's a Bower purchased in 2013. I think Labe nailed it in the fact that as a flash goes, it's just not advanced enough. As long as I can confirm that ttl works in modes other than full auto then I feel more confident investing in a decent speedlight. Most of my work is with studio strobes so the speedlights have been a low priority until now. ...

Click to expand...

Just me, but you may want to take a look at Godox's X system which is rebranded and supported by Adorama as Flashpoint R2 gear.

Godox's gear is cheap Chinese stuff, but you can get Sony-flavor gear that uses the MI foot, does TTL/HSS, can be used cross-system with Canon, Nikon, Fuji, and MFT gear, mixes manual-only and TTL gear while giving remote power control and HSS with everything, every piece has a radio transceiver or receiver built in, and which scales from mini speedlights all the way up to monolights. There's also a Bowens S-mount 600 Ws monolight that's battery-powered and does TTL/HSS. And with add-on accessories it can be plugged into a wall socket, be separated into a pack and head, or have two battery packs ganged to a 1200 Ws extension head. Although most of the excitement right now is around the 200 Ws speedlight-sized AD200 bare bulb modular flash which comes with both a bare bulb head and a fresnel head. It also does TTL/HSS. And its accessories include a twin bracket (with Bowens mount) so you can gang two of them to get 400 Ws output, with LED modeling lights.

If you need something heavier-duty, there's the Phottix Indra and Odin II triggers, along with their Mitros+ and Juno speedlights. But they don't have the bare bulb stuff in the middle.

Just saying. Options.

forest m said:

I think that you will find that your Minolta/Sony flashgun is not compatible because Sony changed the mount for their latest cameras. As previously stated the gun foot needs those tiny contacts on the foot.

Click to expand...

My NEX7 is native to the old shoe. I think it is definitely the fact that it is a cheapie old flash.

kli said:

Dr_Love said:

kli said:

sybersitizen wrote:
...
Be very specific. What is this older cheapie flash from B&H? It might have been designed to support TTL for film cameras rather than digital cameras. The requirements are different.

Click to expand...

It's a Bower purchased in 2013. I think Labe nailed it in the fact that as a flash goes, it's just not advanced enough. As long as I can confirm that ttl works in modes other than full auto then I feel more confident investing in a decent speedlight. Most of my work is with studio strobes so the speedlights have been a low priority until now. ...

Click to expand...

Just me, but you may want to take a look at Godox's X system which is rebranded and supported by Adorama as Flashpoint R2 gear.

Godox's gear is cheap Chinese stuff, but you can get Sony-flavor gear that uses the MI foot, does TTL/HSS, can be used cross-system with Canon, Nikon, Fuji, and MFT gear, mixes manual-only and TTL gear while giving remote power control and HSS with everything, every piece has a radio transceiver or receiver built in, and which scales from mini speedlights all the way up to monolights. There's also a Bowens S-mount 600 Ws monolight that's battery-powered and does TTL/HSS. And with add-on accessories it can be plugged into a wall socket, be separated into a pack and head, or have two battery packs ganged to a 1200 Ws extension head. Although most of the excitement right now is around the 200 Ws speedlight-sized AD200 bare bulb modular flash which comes with both a bare bulb head and a fresnel head. It also does TTL/HSS. And its accessories include a twin bracket (with Bowens mount) so you can gang two of them to get 400 Ws output, with LED modeling lights.

If you need something heavier-duty, there's the Phottix Indra and Odin II triggers, along with their Mitros+ and Juno speedlights. But they don't have the bare bulb stuff in the middle.

Just saying. Options.

Click to expand...

I have a complete Buff Einstein system for when I need real power and modifiers. I'm just looking to add a speedlight or two for occasional convenience of use where I can't take my studio equipment. I have battery packs for location work.