The following post is a duplicate from my other blog, where I will most likely be spending more time in the coming weeks, months, etc. Feel free to check in there for updates if it is slow around here, as I won't be duplicating every post here.

Photo shoots have been few and far between. I have been having some confidence issues; feeling like I don't have enough knowledge, afraid the clients will be disappointed, etc. Mainly, I was afraid to pursue opportunities to take portraits because I felt let down by the results I was getting. I was frustrated that my indoor shots almost always seemed dark, even with my SB600. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with my settings, or my camera, or what I was doing wrong. I couldn't believe that with plenty of overhead room lights on, and with two floodlights in aluminum hardware store lamps, AND my Speedlight (on-camera) the shutter speeds were either too low to avoid blur or the image was dark and extremely lackluster.

Today, I figured it out. I am a complete idiot, that's all. Boy am I relieved to know that compared to the alternative of being a hopeless talent-less failure.

See, several months ago I was searching for help on Speedlight usage (since the Nikon manuals might as well be in Japanese). I found Ken Rockwell's extremely helpful site (www.kenrockwell.com). I'm not blaming Ken for this I'm blaming me for being a little over eager and not paying enough attention to his cautions that went along with the fantastic instructions on using your SB600 with your D70 wirelessly off camera here.

I followed the directions perfectly, played with it a little, and promptly forgot about it. Completely missing the part that says:

"HOW TO RETURN TO NORMAL SHOOTING

This is the bad part: you can't just put the flash back on the camera. It won't even fire if you forget to reset this all. You have to reverse all the settings you made above!

Even worse, if you forget to set the camera's flash back to normal operation you'll go bananas because it will look like it fires each time, however you'll get no flash in your photos! You'll see preflashes, but the on-camera flash doesn't fire for the actual exposure in commander mode. It will look like it's working, but you'll get zero!"

I was going bananas! I found today, when I went back to try these settings again, that the D70 was still set to Commander Mode! Oh boy. What a headache the last few (many) months have been...I can't even remember when I did that...probably at least a year and a half ago.

I haven't tested the theory yet, but I have a hunch that the lighting setup that I was trying to use would actually be adequate (and I was fed up and about to scrap it all and drop a large chunk of change on some Alien Bees strobes). My thought is that the camera may have been compensating its exposure settings (in AUTO mode) expecting the non-functioning flash attached to the hotshoe to fire properly.