Smeared Flash Portraits

[Oscar]

Hi, Good Morning everyone new to forums I don’t know if I’m doing this correctly.
Help All my pictures are kind of smeared with like trailing spots

I have a problem that is really intriguing at least for me (I’m a newbie). I thought it was related to the sync between my two monolight and my Nikon D3000,when shooting the monolights optically. I thought it would be fixed buying a remote trigger with two receivers, but I just got my remotes and still has the same issue. When I use my 55 mm to 120mm all the pictures are perfect no smears. I can see two perfectly round light spot of the monolight on the model eyes. When I use my 18 to 55mm all my pictures are kind of smeared like trailing spots, unless I trigger my moonlights using my internal popup flash and set the monolights to trigger at second flash. I notice that is the shot is very close up it is look better. I will upload you the cropped eyes shots. My setting 1/125 f11 200 iso
Thanks

[Donald]

Hello Oscar (I assume that's your real name) and welcome to CiC.

Can I suggest that you post up some examples of what you're describing. That might help people to help you assess and diagnose the problem.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Oscar,

Nothing that makes sence immediately springs to mind, so anything you can post by way of pictures would be very helpful.

Welcome to CiC from me too by the way!

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Oscar,

Here's how
HELP THREAD: Guide to posting images for comment

Welcome to the CiC forums from ....

[chrisa62401]

Kind of sounds like second curtain flash.

[Oscar]

Hi,
When trigger my two monolights with my wireless flash triggers the picture are smear to the left (is easy to see it in the eyes), unless I increase my speed to 1\400 (where of course I have only half of the sensor lighted) , If I trigger my monolight with my mounted flash (1\60 or even 1/200 f11) pictures are perfect. I’m uploading some samples. I really appreciate your guys help.

[Donald]

That's some good additional information, Oscar. But as we've said above, if you could post some example images that would help greatly.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Oscar,

This is indeed intriguing!

I think we still have a few too many variable here - I'd like to eliminate subject movement as the source of the "smear" - would you be able to shoot a non-moving subject (just about anything will do - perhaps some flowers in a vase of a stack of books), preferably from a tripod, and see if we still get the smear?

[Oscar]

Hi Collin, thanks for your reply
All these shoots are using the same settings Manual 1/60 f/11 ISO-200 I’m using a tripod and release mode on self timer.

Picture 1: Focal length 55 mm Monolights radio triggered



Picture 2 :Focal length 55 mm Monolights triggered by my speedlight in manual (no TTL) in low power hotshoe mounted head turn backward.



Picture 3: Focal length 200 mm Monolights radio triggered (this with radio trigger looks fine if I use my 55-200 mm lens)



Picture 4 :Focal length 200 mm Monolights triggered by my speedlight in manual (no TTL) in low power hotshoe mounted head turn backward.

`

Picture 5 : Focal length 55 mm Monolights radio triggered, but out off sync using 1/500 ..now it looks



Conclusions: When triggering by radio, image is smeared unless I use my 200 mm lens or shutter speed is out of sync 1/500. When triggering by speedlight is always perfect. Crazy ???!!!! or what ???

[Colin Southern]

Hi Oscar,

That is indeed a "dooooosy" as we say

Does the lens have a manual focus switch or a VR switch that you can turn off for further testing? It's almost as if the VR is glitching with that particular combination (not that I'm sure if it even has it). I think we just need to keep working through the possibilities until we understand it a bit better. Do you have access to another lens (of the same type) to test.

On the face of it, it doesn't make a lot of sense - but obviously something is causing it - and I'm sure it'll make a lot more sense when we figure it out!

[Black Pearl]

Just a thought. What delay are you setting on the self-timer? If its low then it could be firing at the same time the VR switched off and the two will clash causing blur.

With flash you won't need the delayed release or even the VR to be honest as the flashes themselves should be enough to freeze the shot. Try firing without the delay.

[Hansm]

To me it looks like it has something to do with focussing.
Your image with the bottle is taken on tripod and delaytime. Still smeared effect.
Maybe your 55 mm AF gets messed up with the radio trigger?
It might be worth to make some exposés manually focussed, just to be sure about AF.

[Black Pearl]

It's not a focus issue there's movement in the shot.

[Hero]

My guess would be VR on a tripod. When playing with my 70-300 VR I found out that on the shorter side of the focal length I could sometimes see the VR sway slightly from side to side to the tiniest of movements (in this case possibly the mirror moving up)

[Squidgy]

VR or IS should always be off when the camera is on a tripod. I had a similar problem when I did some portrait work and had to have the sitter back to re-do the shots because I had left the IS on by mistake and all the shots had movement in them. I must say though, if Oscar has his VR or IS off when using the radio trigger his problem is an odd one. Hope you find a solution soon.

[Oscar]

Thank you guys …….you are the best…………..Yes, VR was on and it was what causing this disastrous results. It was 5:oo am when I checked the forum and as soon as I read that you guys recommend me to switch the VR off, I run to my little studio and I tried and….that was it …. My shoot started coming perfect. Thank you very much this was the only place where I got help with this issue. This will be my favorite internet place since now on.
Thank again I was already in desperate mode when I found this forum.

[Colin Southern]

It was 5o am when I checked the forum and as soon as I read that you guys recommend me to switch the VR off, I run to my little studio and I tried and….that was it …. My shoot started coming perfect.

Yaaaay - solved

You reminded me of a programming problem I had once - is was written in Z80 assembler code and I couldn't for the life of me work out why the darn thing wouldn't jump out of a timing loop when it hit zero. Frustrated, I went to bed (it was getting late) and in the middle of the night (I'm sure I was fast asleep) it just popped into my head (decrementing the HL register pair doesn't set the zero flag when it hits zero) (off memory - it was 30 years ago!) ... I got up - recoded ... SUCCESS! ... and back to bed/sleep!

[Donald]

Thank you very much this was the only place where I got help with this issue. This will be my favorite internet place since now on. Thank again I was already in desperate mode when I found this forum.

Now make sure you tell all your friends that, once again, CiC has come riding over the hill, just like the US cavalry in the movies, and solved the world's problems!

The commitment of people on here to help solve problems and find solutions is always wonderful to see.

[Oscar]

Of course Donald, I will recomend this site to all my friends