Using hot shoe flash on d3300

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AndyG123

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Andy
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How does the hotshoe flash trigger? I've tried this earlier today with aperture priority, I knocked the ISO down to make it too dark.. Took a shot and no flash.
I played about with settings, knocked ISO up to 6400 so it was overly bright. Then the flash triggers? And massively over exposes. So I do the same shot in Darkness and no flash? It seems totally random. The ready light is Red when I rake these each time, I originally had it on ttl and the stock flash in the off position.. So what is the trick to trigger it?
 
Hi Andy - can you tell me what you have on the hotshoe, the lens you are using and the camera settings for the shots where the flash doesn't/does work? (ie aperture, exposure mode, shutter speed, ISO, auto-ISO on or off, exposure comp, flash exposure comp, mode on the flash gun (TTL, manual ). (or just post up jpegs with the EXIF intact). Also, try some more and see if the behaviour is consistent: ie if you set it this way, does it always fail, and if you set it another way does it always fire. Inconsistent behaviour with the same settings is almost always a hardware issue (although something may be changing that you are not aware of): connection issues, battery issues etc.

Owen
 
Hi Andy
Owen has asked some pertinent questions to get to the bottom of your problem - I'll add some general tips (hotshoe mounted flash).

1, when using flash, if you use the semi auto modes, your camera will treat any flash as 'fill' and can produce some seemingly strange behaviour.
2, to counter the above, we usually set the camera in manual, if indoors choose some settings that'll give you a slightly underexposed shot with the ambient light, and a flash on TTL can usually sort itself to give a decent exposure.
3, try to bounce the flash off a large white surface (ceiling) which gives a nicer light - having 'enough' light isn't the same as nice light.
 
I'm using a Vivitar sf 3000, I believe I had my camera on aperture mode, I took ISO right down to 100. Shutter speed was set over 200 in a dark room, flash was set ttl. A result was a few black images then one mega bright over exposed image when the flash decided to work. I thought if I aimed at a dark area the flash would fire, and if I aimed somewhere light it wouldn't. This wasn't the case. It seemed random
 
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Shutter speed needs to be at or below the flash sync speed. Read the manual for flash usage, then re-read the answers to your flash questions, you're coming atthis from the wrong direction.

Flash is simple; but it starts with understanding the premise that when using flash, you're balancing 2 distinct exposures, the ambient (controlled by the shutter speed aperture and ISO) and the flash exposure (controlled by the flash power aperture and ISO)*

*reliant on the shutter being open when the flash fires
** there's a function to use the flash above sync speed, but it's more complex and you lose a lot of flash power, and you don't need to be playing with that till you've got the more simple solution nailed.
 
That Vivitar will just be trigger only though and may well fire even at excessive shutter speeds (ie you won't get an exposure but you'll see it fire). With a Nikon CLS compatible flash or trigger on the shoe, on a D3300 it will lock out shutter speeds above x-sync as this camera cannot do HSS. However, unless I've missed something on the product page http://www.vivitar.com/product/117/archive/328/sf-3000 is a very simple device and the camera has no idea what it is so may well fire it anyway. It's also almost certain it doesn't do TTL. Aiming it somewhere lighter on aperture priority will make the camera choose a faster shutter sped and if it was a shutter speed issue, it would be more likely to fail when aimed at brighter areas.

However! The flash doesn't do TTL and as Phil says - keep it simple when learning flash. Put the camera in manual, dial in an aperture, and a shutter speed of 1/200th or below. With the flash turned off, adjust the ISO and aperture to get an exposure of the ambient light that you like. Then turn the flash on, set it to manual on the camera and "normal" on the Vivi 3300,and well, accept what you get as it doesn't look like you can even adjust the power output on this flash. To adjust the flash exposure (say you want one stop less flash) stop down the aperture by one stop (3 clicks on most cameras), or reduce the ISO by one stop (halve it). This will affect the whole image, ambient and flash. Then, double the shutter duration to bring the ambient back up (this won't affect the flash exposure).

TBH, looking around the internet, lots of people have the same issue with this flash - Nikon, Canon and Olympus users all saying similar things. This coupled with the apparently random nature of the fault leads me to conclude it just doesn't work very well - ie whatever you do with the setup, it's going to fire 1 time out of 4. Maybe have a look at how the centre pin lines up, and give the contacts a clean, replace batteries etc, however I suspect it's a lost case - even if it did work, it'd be very frustrating to use a flash with no adjustment, or bounce - it's probably less useful than the pop-up on-camera, as that does full TTL. Try it out as a slave though - ie fires when the pop-up fires.

https://www.nikonforums.com/forums/topic/3256-external-flash-wont-consistently-fire/
 
Thanks guys, Ill have a further look into it. This flash was included when I Purchased Camera off someone, so wasn't expecting miricles, it doesn't even twist or tilt to be honnest.
 
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