very over exposed

[Anne12343]

Hi, I took a few wedding shots not long ago, and I was using a Nikon D90 with an SB800 flash. Sometimes the shots were fine, but I kept having intermittent problems with the pictures totally blown out and over exposed. One minute it was fine, the next it messed up, then it was fine after the bad shot. Can anyone help with this? Thanks, loads!

[i speak in math]

hard to say, but you were likely in some sort of automatic mode and the camera metered differently for each shot. In the example you posted, it looks like, had you been in spot metering mode, the camera would have metered off the dark shadow under the grooms arm. And that area looks properly exposed so I am guessing thats what happened. Doesn't seem like the shot has the exif intact on here so I can't say.

[RexK_Cozumel]

Originally Posted by i speak in math

hard to say, but you were likely in some sort of automatic mode and the camera metered differently for each shot. In the example you posted, it looks like, had you been in spot metering mode, the camera would have metered off the dark shadow under the grooms arm. And that area looks properly exposed so I am guessing thats what happened. Doesn't seem like the shot has the exif intact on here so I can't say.

That would be my guess as well. Probably spot metering off a shadow which causes the camera to think the scene is very dark so it tells to flash to nuke everything. Try switching over to full matrix metering next time. That should take care of your problem. if you need to adjust the flash output some you can use the flash compensation button as well.

[GadgetRick]

Was the flash in auto (e-ttl) or manual? I have been playing with off-camera flash lately and found manual is much better as the auto mode tends to give inconsistent light as it keeps adjusting based on feedback. Not sure if this happens on-camera as well though.

[ttosifa]

Did you accidentally have your camera in bracket mode? I did this once (back when I used to shoot auto) and couldn't figure out why every 3rd shot was overexposed.