In Need of Help Nikon D40

[leslie_537]

So we are going to DL October 15-18th. I planned on taking my Nikon D40 for the trip. But this past week were we in San Francisco and I could not get the flash to come on for anything. We went to a couple of the missons up there and I could have used the flash for a few shots.

But now I think I have two problems going on here.

1. The flash will not come on. It will pop up when in automatic mode but won't flash. I have went into the Custom Setting and reset everything to default so I dont know if somehow I turned it off or it is broken. Any suggestions???

2. Today at my daughter's school at an assembly. We are in the MultiUse room with fluorescent lights. I was taking some pictures in the Manual mode with the M selected. I have the ISO set to 1600. The exposure I tried at several ranges from 0.00 - +5.0. Every time I took a picture it was just black. Now if I used the manual mode A or P the pictures took fine but were blurry. Any Suggestions?


I am so bummed I will not be able to take this camera. It seems to be messing up. Or maybe I just really suck that bad with pictures.

**Note** I do not plan on using flash on the rides. I hate it just as much as you. But with my manual settings not working either it doesn't seems like I will be able to get any good shots on the fireworks or fantasmic.


Thanks for any help!

 

[VVFF]

So we are going to DL October 15-18th. I planned on taking my Nikon D40 for the trip. But this past week were we in San Francisco and I could not get the flash to come on for anything. We went to a couple of the missons up there and I could have used the flash for a few shots.

But now I think I have two problems going on here.

1. The flash will not come on. It will pop up when in automatic mode but won't flash. I have went into the Custom Setting and reset everything to default so I dont know if somehow I turned it off or it is broken. Any suggestions???

2. Today at my daughter's school at an assembly. We are in the MultiUse room with fluorescent lights. I was taking some pictures in the Manual mode with the M selected. I have the ISO set to 1600. The exposure I tried at several ranges from 0.00 - +5.0. Every time I took a picture it was just black. Now if I used the manual mode A or P the pictures took fine but were blurry. Any Suggestions?


I am so bummed I will not be able to take this camera. It seems to be messing up. Or maybe I just really suck that bad with pictures.

**Note** I do not plan on using flash on the rides. I hate it just as much as you. But with my manual settings not working either it doesn't seems like I will be able to get any good shots on the fireworks or fantasmic.


Thanks for any help!

In regards to the flash...it sounds like its broken to me. In auto mode it should fire if it pops up. If it is broken(and a Nikon user might be able to point out some quirk that you haven't realized here) I wouldn't let that stop me from bringing my camera. Rarely do I need to use flash...especially at WDW.

In regards to manual mode. It should like you were just underexposing your shots. Do you know what your aperture and shutter speed were set to? If not, then I don't think you are aware that Manual is truly manual. In situations where you want the fastest shutter speed with accurate exposure, just use Av(aperture priority) and set it as low as it will go. Zoom out if possible as well.

 

[DisneySuiteFreak]

So we are going to DL October 15-18th. I planned on taking my Nikon D40 for the trip. But this past week were we in San Francisco and I could not get the flash to come on for anything. We went to a couple of the missons up there and I could have used the flash for a few shots.

But now I think I have two problems going on here.

1. The flash will not come on. It will pop up when in automatic mode but won't flash. I have went into the Custom Setting and reset everything to default so I dont know if somehow I turned it off or it is broken. Any suggestions???

2. Today at my daughter's school at an assembly. We are in the MultiUse room with fluorescent lights. I was taking some pictures in the Manual mode with the M selected. I have the ISO set to 1600. The exposure I tried at several ranges from 0.00 - +5.0. Every time I took a picture it was just black. Now if I used the manual mode A or P the pictures took fine but were blurry. Any Suggestions?


I am so bummed I will not be able to take this camera. It seems to be messing up. Or maybe I just really suck that bad with pictures.

**Note** I do not plan on using flash on the rides. I hate it just as much as you. But with my manual settings not working either it doesn't seems like I will be able to get any good shots on the fireworks or fantasmic.


Thanks for any help!

Why don't you post a photo up and then we can check the exif to see what the settings/problems were? Sorry, I don't know why your flash wouldn't work in Auto. If it popped up it should have flashed. Hopefully someone with D40 experience can jump in. On my D80 and D90 you have to manually push the flash button to make it pop up in any mode other than Auto.
I had a photo similar to what you describe when I first started playing around with my D80 and... basically I didn't realize in Manual mode that I had to tell it what settings I wanted. I had the shutter speed set to 1/4000 and the aperture was like f/22 -- too fast and too small to render a usable photo indoors. The photo was all black. In fact, I still remember posting a question about it on several boards thinking something was wrong with my camera. I can laugh abput it now because I know better, but back then I thought for sure something was wrong with the camera. So post a photo up and maybe it'll help diagnose your problem.

 

[YesDear]

do not know where you live but I would see if you have a local photo repair shop that could check it out for you. If under warranty almost certain you would not get back from Nikon in time.

 

[C&B Young]

This might be a dumb suggestion re: the flash not popping up, but is anything in your hot shoe? The other day I was just trying to take some quick snapshots in auto mode and couldn't figure out why my flash wasn't popping up - turns out it was because I had my little plastic protector in the hot shoe! And if you're not dumb like me , will the flash still deploy if you hit the flash button?

 

[ssanders79]

This might be a dumb suggestion re: the flash not popping up, but is anything in your hot shoe? The other day I was just trying to take some quick snapshots in auto mode and couldn't figure out why my flash wasn't popping up - turns out it was because I had my little plastic protector in the hot shoe! And if you're not dumb like me , will the flash still deploy if you hit the flash button?

I rarely use my pop up flash, but when I do it always works when I have the plastic hotshoe protector in place. In fact, I've only had it off twice in the 2+ years I've had the camera when I had access to a speedlight. Bottomline, I do not think the plastic protector is causing your problem.

 

[C&B Young]

I rarely use my pop up flash, but when I do it always works when I have the plastic hotshoe protector in place. In fact, I've only had it off twice in the 2+ years I've had the camera when I had access to a speedlight. Bottomline, I do not think the plastic protector is causing your problem.

Must be a Canon thing then. Also shows how infrequently I use automatic mode.