Camera Setup

Camera Setup

Mounting Your External Flash

The camera setup for using an external flash is very simple with the 5700. First, of course, you must insert the flash foot into the hotshoe of the 5700 and lock the flash. An older Nikon or third party flash has a plastic foot as shown in the right flash below. Newer ones such as SB-50DX, SB-80DX and SB-800 have metal feet (left). There are four contacts. The center one is the ISO contact that every flash has, while the other three are specially made for Nikon flash operations.

After inserting the flash into the hotshoe of the 5700, do not forget to lock the flash into position. Newer Nikon flashes have a switch that can be rotated to the lock (right) position as shown in the left image below. Older Nikon flashes have a rotatable wheel with which you can rotate to a lower position to lock the flash as shown in the right image below.

If you wish to use your external flash off camera, you will need a Nikon TTL flash cord. There are three choices: SC-17, SC-28 and SC-29. The left image below shows the older SC-17. It has a hotshoe and a Nikon TTL compatible foot. After inserting the Nikon TTL-compatible foot into 5700's hotshoe and a Nikon TTL-compatible flash to SC-17's hotshoe, the combo is ready to work. The middle image shows such a setup. But, the SC-17 has a minor problem with the 5700. Since the internal flash must be popped up in order to use the internal or external flash, the SC-17 cord may prevent the internal flash from fully popped up, and, as a result, the internal and/or external flashes may not work properly if this does happen. Therefore, if you are using the SC-17 cord, make sure to push the cord back a little to make sure the internal flash can pop up fully into its position.

To overcome the problem as shown in the right image above, the new SC-28 (below left) has a better flash connector like the SB80DX and all newer Nikon flashes (e.g., SB600 and SB800), and the cable is moved to the left side of the flash connector (below right). Hence, the internal flash will not be blocked by the cable and can be raised fully without any problem. The SC-29 is similar with some extra features that cannot be used with a 5700.

Coolpix 5700's TTL Operation

Regardless the flash mode you intend to use, you have to raise the internal flash as mentioned earlier. We also discussed on the Flash Exposure Control page that the 5700 has its flash sensor on the internal flash (see image below). Therefore, flash metering is done with this non-TTL (i.e., non-Through-The-Lens) meter; however, the 5700 does retain the TTL flash control capability. Moreover, raising the internal flash is the only way to activate the internal and external flashes.

When you set the external flash to the TTL mode, the 5700 will control flash operation in the following way: (1) fire the flash; (2) the non-TTL sensor measures flash illumination; and (3) the camera cuts off the flash output when the illumination is sufficient. So, what is the major problem with this not-so-TTL flash metering? It can be answered in one word: parallax. More precisely, what the camera sees is not what the sensor sees! A flash sensor normally has an angle of view of about 30 degree, which is the same as that of a 80mm lens (35mm equivalent). Therefore, the sensor only sees the center portion of the image for metering. This is in general fine if the subjects are farther away. However, this is definitely not good if the subjects are close to the camera. The following diagram shows such a situation. The flash sensor sees a portion of the scene that is not captured by the camera lens, and that portion is used for metering. Depending on the illumination of the portion seen by the flash sensor, the image may be over- or under- exposed. Moreover, since the external flash is high above of the camera, its illumination may not reach where the lens can see, and, of course, exposure may be incorrect.

Due to the above mentioned problem, you must be very careful when the subjects being photographed are close to the camera. You might want to adjust the flash output properly using the variable power capability. Or, you may use off-camera flash.