External Flash Issue, Is This Normal??

[Lovin-Our-Life]

I recently obtained a external flash unit, Vivitar 2000 from a thrift shop. The flash works great, however, when I connect it to my Nikon D3000, the flash fires, but the shutter continues to stay open just like the flash wasen't there. I checked the manual and online, but it only deals with the built in flash. Good thing is the built in flash will pop up, but not fire.

Is this normal?? Seems like the camera should know theres a flash attached and the shutter should only stay open to get the flash shot. Is there a way to fix this??

Thanks

[brucep]

Back in film days, flashes were pretty dumb things. You could just stick any brand flash on any camera (or wire it to the X socket) and it would work fine. These days, even with third party flashes which claim to be dedicated to my brand and model of camera, I find I'm better off with a flash of my camera's brand, dedicated to my camera model (in addition to other cameras).

This doesn't hold true if you put a manual flash off-camera (say with a slave trigger). Then it will work fine, but you have to experiment to figure out what f-stop to use in any given situation.

Regarding the open shutter: Could it be that, at that low ISO, at that small an f-stop, it has calculated that it needs that long a shutter speed to make an available light (non-flash) photo? ...because it doesn't recognize the flash in the shoe?

[GraphicGr8s]

I've got a feeling that you need to set the flash mode to "Manual" in the settings menu. At least that's what I gathered from the manual on line. Then you would need to actually shoot in whatever Nikon uses for manual, metered mode.

One caveat. Be careful with the trigger voltage of that Vivitar. Some of the old school flash units will fry your camera's electronics. the Vivitar 285 HV I have works but am not sure about the 2000.

[Lovin-Our-Life]

Thanks guys.