Some more Flashgun advice

Hi

I know this question will seem like I'm the only one who could answer it because I will know my needs (but I don't yet), but any input would be greatly welcomed.

I bought the Pentax 360 but now have a chance to buy the Pentax 540 at a good price. I don't have to sell the 360 to fund the 540 but would it be advisable or do you think I would end up regretting selling it ?. I know this may be a difficult question for you to answer for me but as I'm new to flash photography and learning I don't really know the answer myself.

I would welcome the extra power and swivel head of the 540 so will definatley be getting it. Do you find 2 flashes to be very useful or a luxury ? Will a reflector be a better option than the 2nd flashgun for a newbie ?


By the way I also have a Jessops 360 (which is in the classifieds) so another option would be to keep this and sell the Pentax 360.

Do I need the Pentax 360 because of it's wireless TTL ? or would the wireless slave of the Jessops 360 be adequate ?

Or should I keep all three flashes ?



Thanks

Jason

I use both the 360 and 540. The 360 is very compact and great for carrying around. The 540 has nice options for tethering.
And for studio work I use them both at once
Matt

Flashgun is a flashgun. You will eventually want around 3 flashguns or more. And if you are going to be working with Gels and off camera flash, you will be going into manual flash control and wireless triggers territory. At that point you will not care much about TTL, brand, or type, as long as you can set flash into manual and dial 1/1 to 1/64 in as many steps as you can.

I recently got a bargain from SRS. They had a Sunpak Power Zoom 5000AF flash, which is almost exactly same specs as Pentax af540fgz. It even saves settings you used last time which pentax one doesn't do, and it's more compact. It was in Nikon fit but as it is only used off-camera I was laughing. Price £50.

That's exactly what I grabbed a few weeks ago from SRS. I guess they might have a stock of second hands of these ones. I first thought it was Nikon flash as I had stated to Shim in another thread but then when I went to check it found that it was Sunpak Power zoom 5000AF. I didn't know the features it includes just been using straightforward connected to the camera through the that socket on the side. I could do with a longer cable though . I will have to explore some more functions on this one, didn't come with any info so probably will find it on the web.

What camera do you use it with? I was going to check if voltage was fine to use it with the K20 as Shim had recommended but I guess you must already found that its ok, right?

What I would love though for this flash is to connect it to the mains, it would be really handy. Do you know where I can find the adapters for this?

Thanks

Amin

I haven't tried it on top of camera actually yet. Reason I found it in the first place was because couple of days beforehand I broke plastc foot of my Sigma 500super flash when it was mounted on top of camera (glued back to gether now but can' 100% rely on it). So I'm not a big fan of sticking flashes on top of camera's generally.

I don't see why it wouldn't work actually. I got K20D and use cheap radio triggers from ebay. 5000AF has very similar controls to 540fgz, with wheel control, interface is less cluttered. It also works in slave mode too.

I went to SRS Rayners Lane shop and they had it sitting on a shelf for ages. It was brand new. It's a Nikon Film camera flash so it doesn't work in TTL with digital camera's hence why nobody bought it most likely.
Otherwise it should work just fine in full manual mode on top of camera.