DS and aperture ring and flash questions.

Initial impressions on using my new DS have been good however I'm not too happy about the way the camera works when using the aperture ring on the lenses I already had. I've set the camera so that use of the aperture ring is permitted however it looks like when I set an aperture that way the camera uses centre-weighted average metering instead of multi-segment, and the set aperture doesn't appear in the viewfinder display or photo information. Is that definitely the only way the DS can work when the aperture ring is used? I'd expect that with older lenses such as the SMC-M manual focus ones, but not with the lenses I was actually using (an FA* 85mm F1.4 and a Tokina ATX-Pro 80-200 F2.8 ).

I also noticed that when using on-camera flash you had to be a long way back from the subject with either of those lenses or else the shot would be badly over-exposed. Is that also normal? With a subject a couple of metres away the on-camera flash always overexposed badly with the FA* 85mm F1.4 (no matter what aperture was set) but when I used a hot-shoe flash instead that gave perfect exposure.

Regards
Steve

If you have a lens with an "A" setting, there is no point using the aperture ring. It will mean that you have to stop down manually, whereas the A setting will give you full functionality.

With M or K lenses you will indeed need to go the manual stop down route, which I personally find less convenient and so I don't use these lenses with the *istDS (in general, anyway).

I've found that it's not been necessary to stop down manually with the FA compatible lenses in order to get exposure correct, unlike with the SMC-M ones.

The problem is that I've been using the aperture ring for years now and I much prefer the handling that way. With the Z1p I used to leave the camera set in program mode and as soon as the aperture ring was turned away from the A setting it went into aperture priority which seemed an emininently sensible way of doing things. Even using the A setting the Z1p had better handling for setting the aperture and shutter speeds as it had independant dials for each.

which is where the *istD comes in - with separate dials for shutter and aperture. If using the lens off 'A' position, you have to go down the manual route as well, but in 'A' position you get full functionality. Also the DOF works (as it does with *istDS but unlike the Z1-P where to get DOf to work, you had to come off 'A'). I guess to get this 'advanced'/ electronic DoF preview to work meant a sacrifice/ditching of the older Z1-P way of working!
Hope this helps!
Andy

It was hard enough finding a DS in the UK - it looked like there was no hope of locating a *istD!

I'm sure I'll get used to the new way of working however after so many years of using the Z1p it'll take a while.