I am pretty new to flash photography and purchased a Yongnuo YN-565 EX TTL flash as a starter and to learn with. But, either I am doing something wrong, or the TTL is not working on my unit.
I have the flash mounted on a Canon T1i and it is set to TTL mode. The flash will ONLY fire when I use full-automatic (green box) mode on my camera. If I am understanding correctly, it will always fire at 100% in that setting since it essentially disables the TTL setting. Am I correct in that assumption?
But if I switch to ANY other mode, I cannot get the flash to fire. For example, if I switch to Aperture Priority mode, and crank the aperture up to, say, 8.0, the flash will not fire. But, I will get a very nice dark photo.
Is there a setting I am missing on the flash in order to enable TTL? It is not in Manual mode, and says TTL on the unit. The camera is communicating properly as the flash will display the aperture when I set it. But it simply won't fire.
I don't think you are correct in assuming that the flash will only fire at 100% when you are in the "Green" mode on your camera. That should indicate that the camera will attempt to set every setting automatically (and intelligently). In fact, I'm not aware of any camera setting that would tell a flash to fire at only full power. It's either ETTL and therefore automatic power settings, or it isn't and then the flash must be physically set at a power setting.
amacal1 wrote:
I don't think you are correct in assuming that the flash will only fire at 100% when you are in the "Green" mode on your camera. That should indicate that the camera will attempt to set every setting automatically (and intelligently). In fact, I'm not aware of any camera setting that would tell a flash to fire at only full power. It's either ETTL and therefore automatic power settings, or it isn't and then the flash must be physically set at a power setting.
That's what I initially thought as well. However, in the flash's user manual, it says that "Just set the camera’s shooting mode to [AV] (aperture-priority AE), [TV] (shutter-priority-AE), or [M](manual), and you can use ETTL autoflash." That makes me think that ETTL only works on those modes. Mine wasn't firing in those modes, and would only work in the green auto mode. And no matter how much flash compensation I set (I was using negative compensation), it would always (seemingly) fire at the same power (no noticeable difference in the photos taken, even with a large negative compensation).
Plus, I could SWORN that I read it somewhere (or saw it on a video) that in automatic mode it fires 100% power and essentially disables ETTL. I could be wrong with that.
I never shoot in auto mode anyway. I just mentioned it to shows that the flash only fires in that setting. But I think I got it figured out.
