flash set -up help needed

hello

I need a little bit of help. I have been asked to take photos of collegues who are collecting long service medals at the local town hall. I have never owned a flashgun but decised to purchase one off ebay. So a pentax 360 arrived working but without instructions. I was hoping someone could give me a few easy pointers in how to set it up etc before friday as there is a plethora of functions it seems to me. I will be using a 24-70 zoom and a 50mm fixed on a K5. any help would be very gratefully received. thanks in advance Barry

Find the link for the manual here
Set flash to HSS, let the electronics do the business using PTTL.
If this fails scream for Mattmatic.
Regards,
Davex.

Thanks for the speedy reply and info. Although who or what is mattmatics?

Our long time friend. Humble Genius. Generous benefactor. Also, he flashes people.

buy his book.

LOL@Don

My suggestion for the K5...
* Use Av mode on camera, between f/5.6 and f/8
* Set the ISO to a fixed ISO between 800 and 3200 (1600 if you don't shoot RAW)
* Preferably shoot RAW (it'll help if anything goes wrong!)
* Try and bounce the flash if the ceiling isn't too high, and only if it's a white ceiling

Reasons: try and get the camera within 1 or 2 stops of ambient light without the flash, and let the flash fill in the rest. (Some make the mistake of setting something crazy like ISO80, f/22, 1/125s and expect the flash to create a massive blast of light... which of course it cannot! All flashguns have definite limits). Do be aware also of the minimum flash distance as well - if you shoot too close, you'll get overexposed images (using higher ISO increases the minimum distance).

The K5 is pretty well behaved on P-TTL flash (as it has 77 segment metering in the K5/K7).

Oh yes - also, if you get a chance, try out the flash and settings as much as you can so you know what to use on the day

Matt

Was playing around last night using 2 x AF 360s, PTTL gave a correct exposure every time, was very impressed.

Davex.