Camera Setup

To use an external flash, follow the procedure below:

1. Mount an external flash onto the camera. Yes, you must have an external flash mounted to make a selection, although this setup process may not be needed.
2. Make sure your camera is not in the playback nor motion image modes. Press the MENU button (below left) to bring up the menu system (below right). This shows the first menu page.

3. Use the up and down arrows of the cursor buttons (below left) to move to the fourth menu page (below right). If there is no external flash mounted, EXT.FLASH is in grey color and cannot be highlighted. More precisely, when you use the up and down arrows of the cursor buttons, option EXT.FLASH will be skipped.

   If there is an external flash mounted, then you can highlight the EXT.FLASH option as shown below:

   

   There are two options for you to choose from: PRESET and MANUAL. We will discuss the meaning of these options later on this page. Use the left and right arrows of the cursor buttons to highlight one of these two options, followed by the down arrow of the cursor buttons to make a selection. The above image shows the MANUAL option is highlighted.

4. Finally, press the MENU button to return to shooting mode. The selected option will be in effect until it is changed.

Once a selection is made and an external flash is mounted on the camera, the LCD screen and EVF will display an icon in the upper left corner as shown below. Note that this icon will not be shown if there is no external flash on camera.

There are four different icons that may appear in the indicated location. In the table, active means the external flash will fire when the shutter release button is pressed all the way down to take a photo, and disabled means the external flash will not fire even though it is mounted on the camera and turned on. For example, the external flash will not fire if the camera is in the motion image (i.e., movie) mode because the flash cannot keep up and illuminate every frame. This is a very normal restriction.

Icon	Meaning
	The flash is in the PRESET mode and active.
	The flash is in the PRESET mode and disabled.
	The flash is in the MANUAL mode and active.
	The flash is in the MANUAL mode and disabled.

The PRESET Option

When the camera is in the PRESET mode, the aperture and ISO sensitivity are automatically set to F2.8 and 100, respectively. As a result, you have to set the same value to your flash. If you do not wish to do any calculation and adjustment, this is the mode you might want to use in many situations. However, if you are serious about the quality of the result, you should seriously consider the use of the MANUAL mode to be discussed below.

The MANUAL Option

With the MANUAL option, the camera is better in the aperture-priority mode or the manual mode. In this way, you can choose an aperture and ISO sensitivity and the camera will set the shutter speed to 1/60 sec, the flash synchronization shutter speed.