Manual wireless flash with changing Flash Output - Experiment

It has come to my attention that as a professional photographer you can't truly say you've exhausted every possible way to use your Flash equipment. The art of using artificial light is still a growing science that requires a lot of focus aspiring photographers.

So bravely yesterday I decided to put to bed a myth that you can't use a optical wireless flash with manual exposure compensation. Or maybe I should say that I've managed to overcome my ignorance on how to exploit the full capabilities of Sigma EF-610 DG Super flash kit with a Sony DSLR a230 camera. Before I go into to much detail, I must say there's been a lot of debate on whether to use optical over radio and pros and cons. I might sounds little biased (which I probably am), but optical tends to have an advantage under lowlight conditions or in a studio setup.

Anyway, before I get carried away, the aim of this experiment was to learn to use a wireless optical flash in High Speed Sync (HSS) mode combined with manual exposure compensation over TTL compensation. It was quite a challenge at first, but at least the important thing happened in me learning my equipment a little bit better. Now the amazing (or frustrating) thing about the TTL mode is that it uses the camera metering system to adjust the flash output power. Now this can become seriously inconsistent as soon as anything within the shot gets added or removed. So it was quite important to answer the following question... "what is the effect of using manual over TTL in this setup?"

Well the answer is quite staggering. I tried to be as consistent as I could with these shots of my favourite mug while varying the different modes and flash output power. One thing that's for sure, if you don't know what you're doing it's quite easy to overexpose the shot or even under expose. But the best shot was the 1/16 shot. It was interesting to see the TTL mode underexposed the shot slightly although eliminated any background shadows.

Which proves to show that photography is more or an art than a science... Happy shooting!

Pic 1 - 1/1 Exposure compensation

 Pic 2 - 1/4 Exposure compensation

 Pic 3 - 1/16 Exposure compensation (best pic!)

 Pic 4 - TTL Exposure compensation (notice how the picture is underexposed!)