On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 10:42 PM, John Sessoms<[email protected]> wrote: > From: Larry Colen >> >> On Sat, Aug 01, 2009 at 11:45:02AM -0400, Adam Maas wrote: >>> >>> > The Sigma flashes have a well-earned reputation for being cheap junk. >>> > They're both cheaply built and also very rarely actually fully >>> > compatible with the flash protocol they claim to support. >> >> That's good to know. >> >>> > > Metz on the other hand makes superb kit. >> >> If I stick with Pentax, I may well need to find something to replace >> my AF540. I swear that I spend more time fighting that POS than I do >> with it operating correctly. >> Sometimes P-TTL works beautifully, sometimes I just get something >> about four stops underexposed. That, however, may be the camera, >> someone said that they tried a K-7 and where the K20 metered on the >> reflection of the flash the K-7 metered on the rest of the scene. >> >> Since I can't trust P-TTL to work properly, or may have other reasons >> to shoot in manual flash mode, I frequently want to. My AF-540 will >> not stay in manual mode. It'll work in manual for a while and will >> then spontaneously decide that what I really need is P-TTL. >> I even sent it in to be repaired. They replaced a bunch of the >> circuitry, but it still decides it knows better than me what I want. >> > > I don't think it's possible to "repair" it so it won't do that. My > experience with the AF-540 is it will stay in whatever mode you set it in > until it powers itself down to save the batteries. > > When it powers up again it reverts to P-TTL and I think that's the way > Pentax designed it.
So it's broken by design. One reason I love the mode switch on my Nikon Speedlights. No way for the flash to override hardware selection of mode. > >> Another peeve is that there is no manual control over the in camera >> flash. I have studio strobes that can be optically triggered, but >> there seems to be no way of doing so without putting a little dumb >> external flash on my camera. It would be so simple to have a menu item >> to run the flash manually at full power down to 1/16 at 1/2 stop >> intervals. > > I wonder if setting the flash compensation for the built in flash to -2EV > and fitting a small deflector to bounce it up to the ceiling would work? > It might. But even then the preflash will trigger the strobes early. If the strobes are smart enough to offer a preflash delay option, you can also use a Nikon SG-3IR panel to block the visible portion of the popup's firing (this should work for controlling a flash via wireless TTL as well). -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
