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I bought a new flash last week and started using it with my Nikon D40 yesterday. The flash is the yongnuo yn-560 ii.

I had a tough time to photoshoot. I was indoors and shooting on A mode.

Many times the shutter was slow (adapting to the lack of light) and it seemed to me it was assuming I was using no flash. The flash was lighting properly and perfectly synced, but the shutter was still slow so most of my pics were blur because of the motion.

Is there any way I have to set up my D40 so it knows there is a flash and shoots fast? I am trying to avoid using the S mode.

Thanks!

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2 Answers 2

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The D40 has the older version of iTTL, where ambient exposure and flash exposure are metered totally independently - no matter how well your flash lights up the room, the shutter speed is still set so that ambient light would be exposed correctly just as if there were no flash. Newer version of iTTL (starting from D3 and D300) will underexpose ambient when there's flash present.

What you could do is use M (manual) exposure mode. Set the aperture to whatever you want it to be, and shutter speed to camera's max sync speed (1/500 s on the D40) or slower. Since flash is very fast, shutter speed only affects amount of recorded ambient light.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ The D40 will actually sync faster -- all the way up to its top shutter speed provided you're not using a TTL-compatible flash, which "tells the teacher on you" -- but the flash duration needs to be short enough to match the shutter speed or you'll lose flash power. You'd need to be at 1/200 or slower to use the YN-560 at full power; you can go faster at lower power levels. \$\endgroup\$
    – user2719
    Dec 3, 2012 at 20:17
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Use ISO 100 and deliberately under-expose by two to three stops so that flash is the main source of light. Then you let the flash do all the work. Shutter speed in a sense becomes much less relevant because the picture is determined by the milisecond or so that the flash fires; thus, your shutter speed is the speed it takes for your flash to fire which is very fast.

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