Nikon Coolpix 5700 severe flash underexposure problem

Hi, All!

I bought my 5700 in late July to replace my older Fuji 4900. I
bought the Nikon 5700 to replace the Fuji expecting sharper
images with less noise, which it does do well. I didn't have
the budget for a DSLR and lenses.

The 5700 produces excellent results outdoors with bright or
cloudy light, but flash performance is quite variable and
often poor. Examples of the poor pictures I got are posted to
alt.binaries.photos

I collect automobile pictures for a hobby, both digital camera
and scans. Much of the time, I am outdoors at cars shows and
city streets taking pictures some people call "street
shooting", but I also frequent large museums such as the Henry
Ford Museum and the Walter P. Chrysler Museum, both in
Michigan.

Because I want to shoot car pictures in museum settings, I
need more range than is provided by the 5700's built-in
Speedlight, so I bought a Vivitar 728 external flash with a
guide number of 92 at ISO 100.

The Vivitar 728 is an ordinary "dumb" electronic flash in that
it has *no* set-uo or zoom or any options. It's only purpose
is to pour a lot of light onto the subject. I verified at the
camera store where I bought it that it could synch up with my
5700's hot shoe and fire either by itself or with Nikon's
Speedlight, depending on how I have it set-up.

About 1/3 of the time, my flash pictures with either the
Vivitar or Nikon Speedlight are quite good. Another 1/3 are
underexposed by maybe 2 f/stops but are easily fixable in my
favorite editor, Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 9. The remainder are 4-
6 f/stops under and look like the proverbial black cat in a
coal bin.

Virtually all camera set-up functions are factory-standard, so
there is little chance I have messed up the operation of the
camera's auto exposure electronics or any other pertinent
parameter. You can see some of this in the EXIF data of my
attached example pictures. If you would like me to list key
components of my set-up, please advise which ones you want to
verify.

I requested help from Nikon's Tech Support. After asking the
obligatory newbie questions, they basically have said "that's
the way it works". Of course, they won't even talk about my
Vivitar because I wouldn't pop the $280 for a Nikon external
flash.

I've also sent about 20 example images straight from the
camera to . Again, I got stonewalled on
the Vivitar and lots of dumb questions. It is not nearly
resolved yet, and I haven't heard from Nikon since my last E-
mail to them last Friday night.

As to the Vivitar, their only recommendation was to shoot in
full manual mode using the 92 guide number.

The other suggestion was the vary the Speedlight control
called Variable Power. You will see from the pictues I've
posted to a binary group that I've tried the max VP value with
contiuing poor results.

My previous digital, a FujiFilm 4900 from early 2001, manages
pretty well in museum environments even though I only used its
built-in pop-up flash unit. Ditto for my wife's little $150
Kodak 6330. Neither produce "good" results, but exposures are
OK and very consistant.

The "bad" images I take with either the Nikon Speedlight or
the Vivitar are underexposed by 4-6 or more f/stops. They
*can* be fixed in PSP 9, but with much higher edit times than
well-exposed images, plus, digital noise is problematic from
the increased amplification of the 5700's electronics trying
to retain detail in the image. The noise is often impossible
to correct without destroying the sharpness and detail of my
car pictures.

Here is what I've done so far to relieve my problem:

Read the 5700 manual thoroughly, several times. Read the
Vivitar external flash manual thoroughly, several times.
Called Nikon Tech Support on 1-800-645-6689 twice. Contacted
Vivitar Tech Support - they said "our flash has no options -
talk to Nikon, it is their problem". Experimented extensively
with various settings on my camera (putting them back to
"default" when I was done so as not to create a problem
through user error). And, consulted with digital photographer
experts who are Cyber friends of mine on PSP's user forums.
Nothing has helped so far.

As best I've been able to tell from reading the manual and
talking to Nikon Tech Support, metering when using either the
built-in Speedlight or an external flash of any brand besides
Nikon is controlled exclusively by the light sensor on top of
the flip-up speed light. To confirm this, I tested changing my
auto exposure mode from Matrix to Spot without improvement.

The Nikon Tech Support reps I talked to, although well-
trained, patient, and thorough, could not explain to me
exactly how the 5700 determines exposure when using flash of
any kind, and suggested I include that in my E-mail to you.

At the suggestion of Nikon Tech Support, I have also
experimented at the WPC Museum by changing both exposure
compensation (the +/- button next to the shutter release) and
varying the Variable Power setting of the Speed light in Set-
up. When pictures are properly exposed, they are definitely
brighter with Variable Power set to 1 or 2, but that did *not*
improve the severe underexposure I've seen in so many of my
pictures. Ditto for exposure compensation.

I thought I might have figured out what was causing my flash
exposure underexposure inconsistency by noting the it often
occurres with dark subjects and/or when there was something in
the field-of-view that was very light colored and would
reflect a large amount of flash light to the Speedlight
sensor. But I have confirmed that this is *not* always the
case.

I've posted a 9 of example JPEGs straight from the camera that
exhibit the problems I'm describing to alt.binaries.photos
with the sugject line Nikon problem #x, and a description of
the particular image.

Hopefully with my explanation and these example pictures, you
may be able to diagnose my problem and recommend a change in
my procedures to get more reliable results.

I did not post the "good" and "almost good" pictures but the
subject distances and ambient lighting is equivalent to the
"problem" pictures. If it would help anyone reading this post,
I can easily post additional pics to alt.binaries.photos.

In conclusion, I can neither prove nor disprove that I have a
technical problem with my 5700. Nothing that Nikon Tech
Support has said so far suggests that it is broken. So far,
Nikon is still hung up on some sort of user error, which is
entirely possible. IMHO, if the 5700 flash system were broke,
I'd get bad results all the time, not the variability I'm
seeing.

I would appreciate anyone's advice as to 1) what I might be
doing wrong, and 2) what I might do to correct it.

Thank you in advance for any help.

--
Jerry Rivers

--
ATM