Need some help and advice please

Hello all.
I have a couple of questions and I would greatly appreciate your comments.
Apologies about the very long first question but I want to make sure you know exactly what I mean.
Q 1. Last weekend I was in London when the weather was fantastic. I was shooting some family day out photos with my K3 and Metz 58 AF 1 flash. I wanted to use the 'slow speed sync' to try and eliminate some shadows. However I noticed all the shots were over exposed because the the shutter speed was set at 1/180 even though the bright light meant it should have been somewhere around 1/1000 or faster. I checked my K5 at home and the set up is the same. Is there anything I can do to rectify this?

Q 2. Short and sweet. What is 'Manual Flash Discharge' setting for the flash and how would one use it?

Many thanks for your help.
Cheers.

Naim

It sounds like you actually needed to be using 'high speed sync' - soemthing offered on some flashguns. This is designed to allow flash at shutter speeds higher than the maximum 'sync' speed (180th sec), therefore giving you flash but allowing the camera to use a suitable shutter speed for the bright lighting. It is mostly used for fill-flash situations, which sounds like you were working with.

It is usually shortened to 'HSS', so I'd check the Metz instructions how to activate it and for what mode to use on the camera. Manual would be idea, and you would use the green button to get a meter reading once your aperture is set.

Hi Naim:

1. You don't have to shoot at 1/180 with flash. Slow speed sync is all about using a slower shutter to capture ambient light and the flash to fill in shadows. Did you have the camera set on 'X-sync'? If so this will fix the shutter speed at 1/180

2. I'm not familiar with the Metz 58 AF1 so I can't answer this one I'm afraid. I would imagine it is a setting where you can manually set different power outputs for the flash, instead of leaving on P-TTL and adjusting the flash exposure in-camera

Regards
David

Clarification:

I know that slow speed sync would not have helped in your situation, but I wanted to try and explain what it is. Pentax cameras will not shoot higher than 1/180 with flash, so the bright light you are mentioning would not have allowed you to use flash in this circumstance.

You would have needed a ND or polarising filter, or to close the aperture down to reduce the shutter speed enough to allow the use of fill-in flash. Fletcher8 did a post about this some time ago, where he used a ND filter deliberately to allow flash usage outside. The results were very nice.

Regards
David

Thanks McGregNi and David.
Setting the flash to PTTL HSS seems to have allowed the camera to have a higher shutter speed when I pointed it to a bright light even in Aperture Priority but I'll check it during daylight as well. I am going to have a read through the user's manual as well.

David, just to clarify the Manual Flash Discharge is actually a flash setting on the K3, got the same way as all the other flash settings.

Cheers.

Hi David,
I just read your post again - what you are referring to above is actually 'Trailing Curtain Sync'. My problem is with 'Fill in Flash', although as I said last night, the HSS setting may be the answer.

If you want to use fill in flash, but the shutter speed is to high to sync your flash, use a variable ND. This will enable you to bring your shutter speed down to sync your flash. A good ratio for the type of images you are after is about 30% flash to 70% ambient.

Regards Fletcher8

HSS is certainly what you need and it works well with the two current Pentax flashes. There seems to have been a firmware update a year ago to enable HSS on the Metz 58 with the K30 and K5II -- link -- but I can't see one for the K3. There's a good chance this update would work with the K3 as well and it would be worth installing to find out, if your flash doesn't have it already.

Good luck.

Al

I can confirm HSS works with K3 and the Metz

Thanks for your help. Will update the firmware.