>From the sounds of it, your 540 is most likely seriously broken. I think the biggest Pentax issue here is that after so many attempts to repair it, they should have offered you a brand new one in exchange. Pentax service is really hit and miss.
A couple of things for you to check though: How hard to you push over the 'shoe locking lever? I find there's a Goldilocks point: not too hard, not too soft. If you don't engage the lever, the flash may shift in the shoe breaking contact. If you ream it over too hard, the locking pin lifts the flash in the shoe, again breaking contacts. The lever should be pushed to the right lightly, to about the 5 o'clock position viewed from above. Dirty contacts: have you tried cleaning both the pins on the flash and the contact pads in the hotshoe of the camera using contact cleaner fluid? Dirty contacts are deadly for these things. You will get more consistent manual operation if the flash is not mounted in the hotshoe, I find. If you use it handheld or mounted on a coldshoe, triggered optically, it's reliable. Or if you attach it to a wireless trigger so it's only using the center pin, it should be more reliable. And be sure and defeat the auto-sleep mode in the config settings. If it never goes to sleep it will never forget its mode or settings. On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sep 16, 2012, at 7:39 AM, Bruce Walker wrote: > >> Larry: extremely apropos of this convo, read this Strobist article: >> >> http://strobist.blogspot.ca/2012/09/friday-night-lights.html >> >> David tapes a strobe to his tele and shoots nighttime sports. Perfect. > > excellent! > > Speaking of strobes... > > I was the official photographer for this year's San Francisco Lindy Exchange. > In short the swing dancer community in SF invited Swing dancers from all > over the world to SF for a weekend of dancing and camaraderie. Also, some > amazing music: Kim Nalley, Gordon Webster, Barbara Morrison and FIl Lorenz. > > I shot mostly ambient light. At one point this evening there was a special > dance to thank all of the volunteers who helped out. Lots of people, dancing > fast, in low light, with the band brightly lit in the background. I shot > from the mezzanine, and pulled out my AF 540 because that was the only way > that I really had any chance of getting decent shots, and was reminded once > again of what a festering piece of unrepentant shit that flash is. > > This flash has already been to Pentax several times for repairs. Both for a > busted mount, and for exactly these problems. The mount has theoretically > been fixed, but the flash has continued to have the same problems on my K100, > K20, K-x and K-5. If you lob it an easy serve, in simple lighting when what > you need is automatic exposure, and there is nothing to confuse anything, it > can do an awesome job. It's got a lot of power. And when the metering works, > especially for fill, particularly when it needs a lot of fill, it does great. > > But tonight, with the bright lights on the band in the background, in P-TTL > it would not flash bright enough to effectively illuminate the dancers. I set > it to manual, or tried. It wouldn't go into manual. I took the flash off, > put it on. Turned it off, turned it back on. It would go into manual, until I > did something audacious like touch the shutter, at which point it would to > into P-TTL. Some times it would seem to stay in manual, but it wouldn't make > any difference. So I'd boost the sensitivity up a stop. No difference. I'd > boost it again. No difference. I'd boost it again, and now everything in > the frame is over exposed by four stops, or more. > > I'd really think that the one thing that a flash would be able to do right is > work in manual mode. It's about the easiest possible thing. It doesn't need > to talk to the camera, except to fire when the camera says, and to spew as > many photons as you tell it to. The fact that the flagship Pentax flash > can't even get this simple thing right is unconscionable. And if, by some > chance, my flash is an anomaly, and every other AF540 on the planet works > perfectly, the fact that Pentax repair couldn't fix it after three or four > tries is surpassed only by the fact that they've had three or four tries in > which to get it right. > > I love their cameras, but if you value your money, your patience, or > maintaining a good mood when taking pictures, don't spend a single dollar on > Pentax strobes. > >> >> >> On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 7:06 PM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> On Sep 10, 2012, at 3:47 PM, Bruce Walker wrote: >>> >>>> On your musician idea: if you are shooting them any further than a >>>> couple of feet away, by the point that the light reaches them you'll >>>> hardly be able to tell the difference between light from a macro ring >>>> flash and a regular hammerhead flash, except that the ring flash has a >>>> puny light output in comparison. >>> >>> The main advantage is that it stays pointing exactly where the lens is >>> pointing. >>> >>>> Just put various light modifiers, >>>> lenses, grids, etc. on a AF360 or AF540 (or Vivitar) and you'll get a >>>> light almost indistinguishable from a macro ring flash at that >>>> distance. >> [...] >> >> -- >> -bmw >> >> -- >> 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. > > -- > Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est > > > > > > -- > 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. -- -bmw -- 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.
