Why are flashguns SO expensive?

Are they that much cheaper, though?

Was that the going rate everywhere?

That is simply eye-watering.

I doubt that buying from HK hurts Pentax. The tax you pay (or not) surely doesn't affect their profits. Without that option, I guess most people would go second hand or look at an off brand alternative.

I'm not bothered who buys what from there, it was the conflicting posts I found amusing.

As for flashes .. I bought Metz, just as good and quite a bit cheaper.

Most Pentax accessories are ridiculously expensive;

K-5 focus screen £60
M42 adaptor £60
etc etc etc...

As for price differential between here & HK VAT 20% distance between Vietnam to HK Vietnam to UK

As for price of the 540 flash gun I guess its down to the product life cycle curve, at the moment the flash is at the maturity stage & will soon be in the decline stage as a replacement is being brought to production....

The £60 for the M42 adapter really is bonkers. Given that there is most likely a milling machine in Vietnam cranking them out by the thousand how on earth is that a sane price? They shouldn't cost more than £10-£15 given how cheaply the 3rd party ones sell for.

If you want a cheap flash and want to stick with Pentax your best bets are the AF200T/280T or the AF240Z IMO. All long-discontinued but plenty out there for very sensible sums. Bear in mind that in buying from outside the EU you will most likely get stung by not only Her Majesty's Highwaymen but also Parcelfarce's admin "charge".

Sorry, I mean I keep buying pentax products to try to keep pentax alive and hope they will one day go full frame. And the tax system in UK or Europe doesn;t really help any consumer or business. Just cut VAT to 0% and tourist from other country will come to spend money in here and more money will be available in the economy, more people have job, everyone happy.

For the features... I'd get the Metz....
Build quallity on the Metz units is apparently better than the Pentax too... Although my YN560 is built like a tank and at a fraction of the price of either, and my Viv-285hv is just damn sexy ...

The only little glitch with the Metz flash, if you are heavy into wireless I mean, is that their slave optics compared to others are not that good, they have very tight angles. How do I know it? I am heavy into it, with my smoke and high speed photography this was really a must. Had two of them and ended up returning. Got Sigma EF-530DG Super, compatible with Pentax and still have them and use them heavily even though my kit is not pentax anymore. As I trigger them wirelessly they work a treat. Love the way their slave optics work, never fail to trigger.

EDIT: sorry I must add though that the Metz build quality was absolutely fantastic and their ability to go to quite lower power setting was fabulous. Just a shame their slave optics. But if you don't need that feature to be very precise then strongly recommend it

There is always the possibility that Pentax have 'future proofed' their flash units (it's common practice with Nikon) so that your 3rd party flash may work fine on your K5 but that it doesn't work on your K4, K3, etc.

Yes, I think this happened with the Sigma P-TTL flashes from a couple of years back.

It's probably why Metz have made their high-end units firmware-upgradable.

To be honest, there is a good chance that Sigma has reverse engineered the PTTL spec and designed the flashes based on that instead of designing flashes based on the real specification.

It seems to be the case with their lenses too, which could be 'rechipped'.

BTW, do you have a link to prove that Nikon does this? A statement by Nikon would be perfect