Nikon D3400 Flash

Coverage, Exposure and Range
A weak pop-up flash with narrow coverage. Average exposure compensation required.

Coverage. Flash coverage was very narrow at wide angle (18mm), with very dark corners and edges. Coverage at telephoto is much more even, as expected. (Apologies for the dark images, they were shot at ISO 100 instead of the usual ISO 200, however they are still useful for assessing flash coverage.)

Exposure. When it came to exposure, the D3400's built-in flash underexposed our Indoor Portrait subject at its default setting, requiring +0.7 EV flash exposure compensation, which is about average for this shot. Color balance is a little warm, but otherwise the flash performed surprisingly well here given how weak the flash it, and the camera used a reasonably fast 1/60s shutter speed which should help avoid subject motion blur for most portraits.

Manufacturer Specified Flash Range. The Nikon D3400's flash is rated with a Guide Number of only 7/23 (m/ft) at ISO 100. That works out to about 6.6 feet at f/3.5 and 4.1 feet at f/5.6, the maximum apertures of the kit lens at wide and telephoto. As you can see in the flash range test shots above taken with those parameters, the Nikon D3400 produced dim images, indicating the flash output rating is somewhat optimistic.

Note: Here we shoot with manufacturer-specified camera settings, at the range the company claims for the camera, to assess the validity of the specific claims. The specified range has been calculated for the sensitivity, lens and aperture used in the test shot above.