[KellyL]

Jay...you left out one important piece of information. When you metered the clouds, did you use evaluative, center weighted, or spot metering? It would make a difference on your reading, it would seem.

So when you LOWER the shutter speed, you are actually letting in more light.

So if you metered for the clouds, that would put them smack dab in the middle of your zone ruler. By opening up the camera one stop, you moved the clouds one zone to the right. I am using "zone" very loosely. By doing so you are still preserving detail in the highlights and sacrificing in the shadows.

Now, as far as how much space is covered by the flash? Good question. I may be underestimating my flash unit. I still won't use that Metz flash. Adding three more dials to the mix right now is nothing short of a nightmare. Good grief, it only took how many blown exposures for me to constantly remember...ISO...ISO....ISO....because I would shoot at night, then go out the next day and forget to change the ISO. Thank goodness those days are behind me!

So...back to the flash. There is a table in the back of my flash book...I don't think I believe what I am reading. I can't recreate the table but it looks like this:

Coverage / distance (Coverage would be the lens focal lenghth, distance would be the flash.) Am I reading this correctly?

14mm/49.2f 24mm/91.9f 28mm/98.4f 35mm/118.1f 50mm/137.8f 70mm/164f 80mm/173.9f 105mm/190.3f

The top of the table reads Guide No. (ISO 100, in meters/feet)

SO...

If the lens is at 50mm then in normal flash I can expect the output to be 137 feet? That sounds perposterous!