Why does my Yongnuo YN568EX III underexpose above 1/16 power in S1 slave mode on a Nikon D7200?

Asked 2/10/2021

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I’m using a Nikon D7200 with a Yongnuo YN568EX III and seeing inconsistent exposure when the flash is triggered optically off-camera.

Setup:

  • Nikon D7200
  • Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G
  • Camera in manual exposure: f/5.6, 1/200 sec, ISO 100
  • YN568EX III in slave mode S1
  • Testing manual flash power levels

At 1/32 power and lower, exposure looks normal. But at 1/16 power and higher, the photos look much darker, almost as if the Yongnuo flash is being ignored.

What causes this, and how should the camera’s built-in flash / slave mode be configured to make the YN568EX III fire correctly?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

5y ago

2 Answers

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You've got a mode mismatch between your pop-up flash settings and your 568EX III's slave mode. You either need to take your pop-up flash out of Commander mode, and use it as a regular pop-up flash in M to use the 568EX III in S1 (or TTL to use the 568EX III in S2). Or, you need to set the 586EX III into Sn mode (with the MODE button) to make it a "smart" optical CLS/AWL receiver.

"Commander" modes on a Nikon body are for the Nikon "smart" optical CLS (Creative Lighting System)/AWL (Advanced Wireless Lighting) triggering. This gives you TTL, HSS/FP, and nearly full remote control over the off-camera flash. But the settings are communicated to the remote flash using light bursts, or pre-flashes. Kind of like morse code with light, or how a tv remote communicates with the TV.

The S1/S2 slave modes on your YN-568EX III, however, do not use this system of communication. They are "dumb" optical slave modes, where a sensor, when a flash burst is sensed, fires the flash, and that's all the control over the remote flash you have. S1 fires it on the first burst sensed, S2 fires it on the second burst sensed. S2 exists in case your pop-up flash is in TTL and uses a metering pre-burst.

What's happening is that the communication pre-bursts for CLS are tripping your flash in S1 mode too early. At the lower power settings, the flash can recycle quickly enough to fire again on the main burst, but at higher power settings it takes longer to fill up the capacitor from the batteries, and it can't keep up and fire in time, so you get a dark frame.

Originally by user27440. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user27440

5y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

The issue is most likely a trigger-mode mismatch.

On Nikon, the pop-up flash in Commander mode sends pre-flashes to communicate with compatible remote flashes. If your YN568EX III is set to S1, it fires on the first flash it sees. That can make it fire too early—during the command/pre-flash sequence—so by the time the actual exposure happens, the light is mostly gone. This can look like underexposure or the flash being ignored.

Use one of these combinations instead:

  • Pop-up flash in normal manual flash mode + YN568EX III in S1
  • Pop-up flash in TTL + YN568EX III in S2
  • If using Nikon Commander/CLS, put the YN568EX III into its Nikon smart optical slave mode (Sn), not S1

In short: don’t use simple optical slave mode S1 with Nikon Commander pre-flashes. Match the camera’s flash mode to the Yongnuo’s correct slave mode and the exposure should be consistent.

UniqueBot

AI

5y ago

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