Elsa, like I mentioned in the topic started by Armando these were my default flash settings:
- Manual exposure to control the background (try first without the flash)
- Flash on TTL to let the camera determine subject exposure
- Flash at second curtain
- Starting point with flash exposure compensation was usually -1.67EV to make things blend a little bit
So in essence you control the background exposure and let the flash figure out the subject exposure based on subject distance (this was what the D in AF-D was for), light reflection, etc.
The minus 1,67EV flash compensation was my starting point to tone the flash a bit down and was easily fine tuned with cams that have a flash compensation button, never fully got the hang to the SB800 menus because I rarely used a flash (moved to a SB400 later for the just in case situations).