A few quick tips

I've been asked on Saturday evening to take some family group shots. At a family get together. The group will be approx 30 people and then some smaller ones of 6 people. Now. I'm going to use my K5ii + 540FGz. So though accomplished in off camera flash with studio lighting. I've never used my flash on camera.. So with this in mind. What are your recommended Camera and flash settings. I'm hoping that I can get away with simply flash sync speed and P-TTL.
What would you recommend I do ?

Nigel's flash guide may help, not looked at it yet.

link

Just seen his post. Many thanks for the nudge...

Regardless of the settings, I wouldn't recommend firing the flash head straight at the subjects, although I suspect you will already know this. Have you got a clip-on softbox that would be feasible to use without being too bulky?

Regards
David

Yes David, I have a Flash bender kind of thing or a Gary Fong. My Main problem in the past has been getting consistent results. Quite a lot of the time images are massively over exposed. So much so that I have no confidence in my flash. Thus having to check every image to see if it is correctly exposed. I thought the P-ttl system took care of that ?

After just reading a little Nigel's piece on Pentax flash. I think I may have been wrongly setting my sync speed to 1/180th and letting AV mode control the aperture. I've just be trying it in "P" mode.. A mode Ive never used before if im honest. But while not maybe giving the highest quality. It does seem a lot more consistant.

It's worth trying 'auto' mode. I find that PTTL seems to work well for direct flash but is inconsistent with diffusers or bounce flash. Auto usually gives more accurate exposure, for me at least.

Thanks Smudge.. That's something to look into As I was planning to bounce my flash at the event.