Need help with using Mamiya 7 II indoors

[kmallick]

I need your help and advice....

Just when I have started getting the hang of using my Mamiya 7II for mostly still life and landscapes outdoors , I thought of giving myself a new challenge of using the camera indoors with flash. To start with, I wanted to experiment with some indoor environmental portraits of the family and kids. I have very little experience with using strobes and flash indoors except using the auto TTL everything on DSLRs. Therefore, I read up on all the articles I could find in books and online for using flash in manual and auto mode (including Ken Rockwell's page on Mamiya 7). This was a great experience by itself and I have a better appreciation of what you can do with a flash without any auto-TTL to do all the thinking for you.

I found an old Pentax AF-400T hammerhead flash lying around. I loaded a 100 iso print film in Mamiya 7 II and 80mm combo, connected the flash using a sync cable, put the flash on auto (non TTL) and proceeded to set the aperture recommended by the flash. But it was a bit of a shock to discover that I don't have enough shutter speed to allow hand holding the camera and heavy flash & bracket combo. I think the indoor light was such that the shutter speed would be inadequate at F/4.5 even with a 400 speed film.

The combo worked well outside in the sunlight and the flash worked just fine, although I have to wait to see the results from the prints.

So what am I missing here? Surely the flash has enough power to expose people indoors. But will the results be pleasing? Should I forget about Mamiya 7 and the slow lenses for flash photography inside? I can see how the flash will work great as a fill flash outside at high sync speed. But when I am shooting indoors with low speed films, I am afraid that I will get blurry shots if I want to have just a bit of fill flash combined with properly exposed surrounding with ambient light.

I am all ears to find out how best to use the system for indoor portraits with flash.

 

[tlitody]

use a faster film. Ilford Delta 3200.
You can shoot at 3200 and develop in microphen or shoot at 1600 and develop in DD-X.
That will give you two or 3 more stops speed.

 

[kmallick]

use a faster film. Ilford Delta 3200.
You can shoot at 3200 and develop in microphen or shoot at 1600 and develop in DD-X.
That will give you two or 3 more stops speed.

Thanks for the tip. I will definitely try that. But I was hoping I could shoot some in Color C41.

I can shoot ISO 400 film on my OM-4T in TTL without any problem at F4 or smaller. I see the advantage of TTL and the in-camera electronics here. I am just wondering how to get the right flash exposure using a non-TTL flash under the same conditions without causing a blur.

 

[tlitody]

your mamiya uses leaf shutters so sync speed is upto maximum shutter speed.
Exposure is controlled by aperture and not shutter speed when using flash as flash duration will be 1000th second or less. So if you want to stop movement you should be able to set shutter speed to 1/500th

Then you have your flash guide number(GN). You need to know whether your GN is given in feet or Meters. Assuming its in Feet, then your GN dived by subject distance = F-Number you should use. So if your GN is 60 feet and the distance is 10 feet then 60/10 = F6 so you set aperture to F6. You can set shutter speed to whatever you want to but I'd suggest to make it fast enough to stop any background blur caused by camera movement.

Again you must know if your flash GN is given in feet or meters because if its in meters then subject distance of 10 feet is 3 meters and if your GN is 20 meters then you have 20/3 = F7.

And the figures given for the GN are usually at ISO100. If you are using 400 speed film then you need to close down by another two stops so your calculated f-no needs to be adjusted from F7 to around F11.

 

[kmallick]

Understood all that. Thanks again. Much appreciated.

Let me ask my question a different way. Lets say I have 100 iso film. The aperture recommended by my flash in Auto mode is F5.6. I set my aperture in Mamiya 7II to 5.6 and choose a shutter speed of 1/60 to avoid shake. But the Mamiya 7II meter or even a handheld meter inside my room will recommend a shutter speed of ~1 sec at that aperture. Therefore, if I fire the flash, I will hardly get any exposure of the ambient. My subjects will be all glowing with flash (even if bounced) with dark background. Is there any way to improve upon this?

 

[t.s.k.]

FWIW, a flash meter would solve many of your problems. I'm just sayin'.

Short of that, it sounds like it's too dark for the film speed to allow for any measure of ambient light. Moreover, you'll need a fairly powerful flash to shed some quality, diffused light on the subject. Again, a flash meter would help immensely.

 

[Brian Legge]

In that situation, you're looking more into how to light a space with strobes than anything else. And into use of remote triggers, etc. If that is an area of interest, I'd recommend googling 'strobist'. as there is a huge body of information on the net about it.

 

[tlitody]

Understood all that. Thanks again. Much appreciated.

Let me ask my question a different way. Lets say I have 100 iso film. The aperture recommended by my flash in Auto mode is F5.6. I set my aperture in Mamiya 7II to 5.6 and choose a shutter speed of 1/60 to avoid shake. But the Mamiya 7II meter or even a handheld meter inside my room will recommend a shutter speed of ~1 sec at that aperture. Therefore, if I fire the flash, I will hardly get any exposure of the ambient. My subjects will be all glowing with flash (even if bounced) with dark background. Is there any way to improve upon this?

If there was enough light for ambient you wouldn't need a flash!

Put the camera in manual and put the flash in manual. Take a typical subject distance reading from your lens and set everything accordingly. If the background is close enough to your subject it will get a fair amount of light. Remember doubling the distance you get a quarter the brightness which is two stops less. So if your subject is 15 feet and the background 30 feet it will get two stops less so won't be entirely dark. And if the background is 22 feet it will get roughly one stop less than the subject distance.

This is why studios use several lights to balance the lighting. You can't do that with one on camera flash unit. If the subject is still enough you can use the longer exposure for ambient but if the subject is moving around you can't.

 

[t.s.k.]

Agreed...Look up the strobist group on flickr.

 

[tlitody]

And if your ceilings are white then you can point flash at ceiling to use it for bounce flash which will send light all round the room but mostly up and down to the subject. If ceilings aren't white you will get colour cast from its colour.

 

[kmallick]

Thanks for all the tips and advice. Things are making sense now. I just need to play around and practice.

I have been to the strobist site before. Great site. I find some stuff quite interesting, but many of them are way off of what I would feel comfortable or interested in.

 

[atlcruiser]

The only reliable way I have found to figure out manual flash is to use a fash meter or use the guide numbers. I really find guide numbers easier and use my meter for "set up" shots with strobes/umbrellas etc.... I am still learning manual flash but one big issue I found on my quest for info was that most of the info easily found is directed to the digital crowd. Take a PIC in the ballpark of what you want, look at it then adj. Not so easy wtih film 🙂

Guide number divided by distance = F stop, F stop divided by guide number = distance.

Ex: 100 speed film @ f11 gives you a 10 foot distance, at f22 a 5 foot distance, at f5.6 a 15 foot distance.

All of that equals 100% of light from the flash. Shutter speed makes little difference until you get to very hi speeds that the mamiya 7 does not even have! I slap it on 125 and go for it but I could also do 250 with the same result.

Generally, if you do not have much ambient light, normal indoor shot for ex, a lower shutter speed will not make much difference. As the ambient light gets brighter the lower shutter speeds will allow more ambient light so you will overexpose unless you up the shutter speed or close the f stop....fill flash is an art in its own!

another point is that most flash units are set to a lens FOV. 35mm/50mm/80mm etc. Most of the time that is in refrence to a 35mm format. You need to figure out the MF comparable Fov and use that flash setting to get enough coverage.

With many flash units the 35mm is standard coverage with the 50mm being a more directed flash = more power=higher guide number but less coverage. On many flash units guide numbers are expressed as they work with the FOV...ex. 28mm=70, 35mm=100, 80mm=140 etc.... so decisions need to be made for coverage and which guide number to work with.


good luck...i use manual flash all the time on my mamiya 7...fun stuff!

 

[kmallick]

excellent nuggets there. thank you atlcruiser.