New convert to Digital

After my LX finally succumbed to ‘sticky mirror’ I decided it was time to move on, and having a large collection of lenses of the LX had only one choice the “istD.
I have been lurking around these forums for a while and would like to thank everyone for the advice given on the *istD – it was very helpful.

I bought a bundle including a FA 24-90mm lens and 1GB flash card from Park Cameras (very impressed with them). My first impressions are very favourable – shooting in RAW mode it appears to give better results than scanning 35mm slides with my Minolta Dimage Elite 5400, which surprised me. I am using Photoshop CS to import the raw images, with Adobe’s Camera RAW 2.2 plug-in.

The USB1.1 is a bit disappointing – I would have expected USB2 or Firewire on a camera capable of storing 13MB images in RAW mode.

I must say given the sophistication of the camera the documentation is very poor (not a patch on the old LX handbook) – perhaps a two part guide would have been better, getting started and advanced users guide which could have been included as a PDF on the CD. Without reading the posts here on the subject of using M lenses I would have been struggling but its all sorted now (upgraded the firmware to 1.11). The main problem was forgetting to switch to manual focusing mode, as in either of the auto-modes the shutter will not release. The auto focus takes some getting used to – but I don’t think I will miss the interchangeable screens and viewfinders of the LX as much as I expected to.

I guess the next challenge is to see if there is any way to use my AF400T flash with the *istD.

(The LX was successfully repaired by Asahi Photo – and I wonder how many of the new models will still be around after 20 years! )

To take your last point first, I doubt if many working examples of current camera will be useable in 20 years time. I've just bouight another Spotmatic that was probably made around 1966 and it is fully functional, and even a 1959 Voigtlander Bessamatic that is in superb condition.

But digital photography does have its place and I fully intend to go for the *istD very soon. Hope you enjoy yours!

I don't believe you will have a problem using your AF400T with the *ist D. You will need to buy three things: the hotshoe adapter Fg, a sync cord F 5P, and the off-camera adapter F, on which you can mount your 4P sync cord B.

A simpler and cheaper solution would be to fire the flash using a slave.

I looked into this a bit further (thanks to forum on dpreview.com) and found all I needed was the 4P Synch Cord B. Which has a hotshoe adaptor for the *istD and a 5 pin plug on the cable to connect to the AF400T. It only arrived today so not had much time to experiment, but the TTL function on the AF400T does work correctly with the *istD.

I did notice that the http://www.bdimitrov.de/kmp/flashes/ site incorrectly reports the ‘4P’ sync cord plugs as having 4 pins they do in fact have 5 pins – this confused me as the socket on the side of the AF400T has 5 pins, which initially made me think the 4P sync cord would not work. The hotshoe end has 3 contacts – centre, and two below it (looking from the back of the camera) the upper right contact on the *istD is not contacted by the adapter. A fourth connection is made by two spring contacts which connect to the rails.

Also I guess what adds to the confusion is the AF400TZ which is a hotshoe mounted flash whereas the AF400T is a hammerhead flash.

Boz wrong? Heresy. Sorry to have misled you. Though my suggestion would have worked, yours is simpler and cheaper.

What you are saying I think is that the connectors that go to the flash are the same for both the 4p and the 5p cables. One pin is redundant on the 4p cable because it has nothing to connect to at the camera end.

I don't have any 4p stuff and was relying on what Boz said. He's usually accurate, so this has dented my confidence a little.

I have just traced out the connections on the 4P Synch Cord B. The centre pin of the 5 pin plug is not connected to the hotshoe. So as stated on the Bojidar Dimitrov site there are only four wires including the ground, but 5 pins. Looking at photos of the 5P synch cord it looks like they have changed to a more robust connector – maybe someone who has both 4P and 5P cables could confirm this.

The final irony – I have just received a reply from Pentax UK after almost two weeks stating the AF400T is not suitable for use with the *istD, the day after I successfully used it with the *istD.

Pentax UK may not be entirely wrong.

Many of us have had problems with various TTL flash units in conjunction with the *ist D.

One theory is that the camera was only tested at 400 ISO, and doesn't work properly at other ISO settings. Other people say that the AF360FGZ works well, but other guns don't. Others say that the camera only operates well with Pentax AF lenses (which have a chip inside).

Apparently this is a problem that affects digital SLRs from other manufacturers, too.