Home » Alpha live view and studio flashes don't mix

Alpha live view and studio flashes don't mix

Posted May 15th, 2008 by kstyle

Hi,

I have recently upgraded from a Sony F828 to a Alpha 350. I usually do studio work (model photography) and think the A350 has a big shortcoming when working with studio flashes... live view is simply unuseable!

As most of you will know, live view is a bit like WYSIWYG. You see a live preview of the actual photo on your screen. When changing the F and shutter times, you see the results of those changes right away on the screen. So when working in Manual mode, it's logical that you don't see much on the screen when your camera is set to 1/125th, F8 and you're working indoors. All you'll see is dark shadows on the lcd screen. But these settings are ofcourse optimal for studio flashes (soft boxes etc)! So when working with flashes, you can't see what you're doing with live view... And this happens to be the reason that I bought the A350 for.

Now, when in Bulb mode (keeping-the-shutter-open-as-long-as-you-press-the button-mode), the camera does not know what shutter time you'll be using, so what it does is compensate the view automatically. You could call this auto-gain mode. When pointing to a light source, you see the screen compensating for the brightness. When pointing to a dark place, you see the brightness boosted. This has nothing to do with your settings and how the photo is going to look, but it just allows you to see what you're doing on the lcd screen! Because, when will one actually use Bulb mode? Probably when shooting a night scene or something, so you need to see something on the lcd screen...

And this is how the display should also behave in manual mode, when you have selected the flash (or WL flash when using external flashes).
When in Manual and your settings are set for the studio flashes, you cannot see what you are shooting on the live view. This could easily be compensated when using the "autogain" as in Bulb mode. Even my old Sony F828 did this with ease, when selecting the flash in manual mode, and I was very surprised to see the A350 was incapable of this. AFAIK there's not one menu option to change this. I whished Sony would release firmware upgrade to fix this... I want to use the live view in the studio and it's just not possible. So I'm quite disappointed.

And please don't tell me to use the optical view vinder! ;-)

Patrick.

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