AF540FGZ, K10D, Wireless Flash problem

I've updated my K10D to V1.3 firmware and now wireless flash doesn't work as expected.

I have 1 X AF540FGZ and 2 X AF360FGZ flashes.

If I use the onboard flash as a master or controller, all seems to work well.

If I then place either a 540 or a 360 on the hotshoe, it all goes pear shaped.

With a 360 fitted to the camera, the 360 as master/controller and 360 slave flash fire, but the slave does not illuminate the scene at the time the shutter is open.

Using the 540 atop the camera, the same thing happens, except with the 540 set to wireless slave, the 2 real slaves fire and illuminate the scene when the shutter is open. The 360's do not fire when set to slave.

Can anybody else (Matt) test this?

I did notice a difference in exposure consistency when I updated the camera firmware. Have Pentax broken the wireless flash function?

EDIT 1. With the AF540FGZ set as off-camera wireless slave, it is triggered only when the onboard flash is set to master, not controller. AF360FGZ's behave corrrectly.

EDIT 2. I've tried reloading formware V1.2 and the camera/firmware will not allow it because it's an older version.

Are all flashes set to slave mode 1? Hold the flash's backlight button for a few seconds.
Are all set to the same channel?

You say the "...2 real slaves fire... The 360's do not fire".
Do you have just the one 540 and two 360s? Or do you have other strobes?

They are now . My 2 360's were set to to slave mode 2. Thanks for that. The 540 was already set to slave mode 1. All flashes are on channel 1 (I got that right at least).

I'll try again, thanks for your quick reply.

Thanks for your help Amoringello. All is now working as expected. Although I fail to see how having the 360's set to slave 2 caused the 540 not to fire from the onboard flash set as a controller.

I had of course checked and double checked every conceivable setting . . . except that one which I'd completely forgotten about .

Anyway, thanks again. Now I can take some pics of my new kitchen .

Slave 2 mode will cause the flash to behave as a dumb flash. In other words the flash will fire on the first light it sees.
The pop-up flash and any PTTL aware flash in the hotshoe will fire a pre-flash. This will cause the dumb slaves to fire, but no in sequence with he mirror being up.
Thee is no way to turn that off, but sometimes under certain conditions the slaves will be able to fire on both the pre-flash and on the main flash.

As Controller, the 540 in the hotshoe will fire pre-flash but will not fire a main flash. As Master, it will fire both pre-flash and main flash. So you might get lucky in Master mode.
If the 540 never even fired a pre-flash as the controller, then there is a problem. But I suspect if you step back and watch the flash you'll see it fire. (you just wont get any change in exposure on the final image.)

I have a dumb non-PTTL flash that I stick on the hotshoe and it will always fire the Slave 2 mode flashes every time. It also gives a bit quicker response since no pre-flash is done.. but of course then everything has to be set manually.


Anyway, glad that helped.
I change modes all the time, and have forgotten to switch on several occasions. Or I drop the flash in my bag while it is still on and by chance the modes get switched because something hit the buttons. It has become one of the first things I check now. Argh!!

I made so many test shots to decide where the problem lay and I could have misinterpreted what was going on. The fact is, there is a difference between how the 360 and 540 behaves when fitted to the camera, no other flash involved.

One very obvious difference is that the 540 will fire, on-camera, if it is set to wireless slave. With a 360 on-camera and set to wireless slave, it doesn't fire, which is what I would expect. Then again, I might have reached that conclusion when I had my 540 set to slave mode 1, and the 360's set to mode 2.

The other issue that I thought I had, and I will re-test when time permits, is with the 540 off-camera and set to wireless slave mode, it didn't fire when the onboard flash was used as wireless controller. It did fire if the onboard flash was set to master.

A possible cause of this behaviour might have been if I had a 360 powered up and set to slave mode 2. It would have fired on preflash and possibly 'confused' the 540. I need to retest this to be sure.

Incidentally, a wireless controller will produce a main flash but the output is dramatically reduced, maybe even a stream of pulses, it'll trigger the slaves to fire but will not contribute to scene illumination very much, but it does a little.

There was a time when life was much simpler . . . .

That is interesting. I know when in Control mode I do see reflections of the flash. I figured the flash simply did not diminish enough to be fully unnoticeable. But if it is actually performing some amount of main flash, that makes more sense with regards to what I'm seeing.
I just did not expect there to be any reason to do so.

Thanks

If you think about it, how else would the slaves trigger at the right time ? There is no other communication between camera and wireless slave, other than the light from the 'controller' or 'master' flash.

I would have suspected the pre-flash communications would be prior to the shutter. As a controller-only, the main flash would not be necessary as all settings regarding power and timing have been taken care of.

But you're right. It is the main flash that triggers the synchronized main flash from all the slaves. I never noticed that from the pop-up before even in reflective surfcaes because it is so extremely low power. he, he, I never photographed myself with the camera in the mirror using wireless flash, and no slaves, before.
But wouldn't ya know, a small beacon of light from the pop-up as well.

As they say... ya learn something new every day.