Reading Track League

I really am struggling to get the hang of this flash! At last week's Reading Velodrome Racing Monday Night Track League meeting I took it along for the first time and the batteries ran out. I ended up chatting to people all evening because I'd become dependent on it - even though I'd been using the pop-up flash all season!

This week I'd bought some rechargeables and they lasted the whole evening, but it wasn't very successful, frankly. Shots were either under exposed or over exposed, riders complained about being blinded by the flash (in shots that were underexposed). I'm not quite sure what to do.

It doesn't seem to cause anyone any problems during the day, used as a fill-in flash, which isn't a great surprise. And, at night, if you get close enough it seems to be OK with the diffuser on - but the range on that is less than pathetic. Without it, it blinds people and there seems to be a 2m wide window between hopeless over exposure and darkly despondent under exposure.

The only consolation is that this was the last race meeting of the season and I have until next Spring to figure it out. The bad news is I'm not sure how I'm going to get any opportunities to figure it out when there's no racing on!

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Comments

[mike]

I have similar issues with flash, except I'm additionally finding it difficult to get the flash exposure control right.

[gswarbrick]

There's a thread on www.veloriders.co.uk with Larry Hickmott - the British Cycling photographer - on the difficulties of using flash for night sporting events. He uses manual settings and a diffuser and says that even high-end flashes like the SB-800 struggle in auto modes for this type of photography. So I guess I need to get re-acquainted with guide numbers etc.