It is dark, rainy, and nothing good indoors to photograph today, but I just love my new Tamron 90mm Macro. So what to do...? Take photos of stupid stuff, of course! Well, at least its more colorful than most of the things I have to photograph at the moment.

The left portion of the image is a full size crop next to the smaller rendering of the icons. I like how you can even see the ripples in the plastic of the LCD screen. That was rather unexpected.
These are on a 24" wide screen LCD so the left portion of the image is less than 0.5cm in height. The right side is pretty much the full height of the original image shrunk to fit the space.

The lens ended up being at a slight angle so not much of the image is fully in focus. Anyway, I'll try to get in the garden this weekend and get some of your typical macro flower shots. Looks like there might be some real interesting bits from what I caught earlier, but without a tripod at the time, they are blurry. I guess macro without a tripod is pretty much a waste -- at least with my hands.

I have the Tamron 90mm and I love it.
I have seen the Pentax 100, but haven't used it enough to thoroughly compare. For the few shots I did take in the shop, I didn't notice much difference.
Tamron is very sharp and has great bokeh. Although at F11 the sharpness starts to decrease noticeably.
For my uses, I couldn't see the value in the $200 extra that the Pentax lens would have cost me.

Just thought I'd add a bit of info from Bogen/Elinchrom...
The main contact at Bogen had been out with some family stuff. 20 days seems like a long time to not have calls handed off to another person, but so be it... I was soon helped emphatically by three people with apologies all around... for about a day.

With several days between responses, and trying to explain myself multiple times, I got a final response:

"Today's Skyports will never flash your Pentex camera at 1/250th, or it seems like at 1/180 of a second. Since this is not a defect, getting a new one won't fix the problem. ...
I'm sorry that Skyports don't meet your needs so you might want to take your dealer up on their offer to get a refund."


I tried to explain myself one last time, and again that I am only expecting 1/180 sync speed. It has been another week and all I hear is the screaming in my head.

Bogen/Elinchrom is obviously unwilling to work with their customer to resolve any issues. I had still been trying to explain that I feel the problem could be on my end and was hoping to find some way to determine that for sure. Yet they are only interested in dumping me off.

I have no intention of giving up photography or of ever buying more lighting equipment, but when the time comes to buy again it will certainly not be with Bogen/Elinchrom!

Oh, by the way, the dark area is at the bottom of the frame. So that is the top of th sensor. Does the shutter open top to bottom (of the camera) or bottom up?
In other words, with the dark area at the bottom of the image, is that an indication of the flash starting too slowly, or the flash finishing to quickly?


I suspect the Skyport just introduces far more delay than advertised, and the flash goes off too late.
I would think if it was a problem with shutter delay, that I would have the same issue with the dumb flash in the hotshoe, or perhaps even worse since there is no delay to flash at all.

The Dlites have a flash duration of 1/800s.
The AF360&540FGZ have various flash durations, generally as slow as 1/1000 and possible to go much faster.
I have a third off camera dumb (non-PTTL) flash. No idea on its flash duration is but reasonably fast.

All work fine in X-Sync with cables.
The Pentax PTTL flashes work fine wired, and in PTTL wireless.
All flashes work well if slaved off a dumb flash in the hotshoe.
All up to the camera's sync speed of 1/180 without problems.

It is only when the Skyport remotes are introduced that I can barely reach 1/125s.


FYI, I've called Elinchrom several more times, as has my dealer.
Still no word after 20+ days!!

For the reputation they have, they will not be getting my business again.
I suppose to them, I mean nothing. Heck, they already have my money, eh?


Word of warning to anyone who doesn't yet own Elnchrom equipment...
think twice. If it works, great. If not, who you gonna talk to about it?

Not much to add but thought this might be interesting/helpful to some...

I'm still having the same issues. Short range, inability to sync above 1/125 (barely in range - I think I still see some darkness!)

Anyway, I've been calling Elinchrom technical support. The dealer from which I bought the remotes has been calling technical support.
We've both contacted the sales rep.

Two, going on three weeks now...
[crickets chirping...]

A few days before I bought the remote triggers, I had two of my new Elinchrom strobes die in under 50 shots due to faulty hardware.
Known issue with capacitors from one of their vendors. Elinchrom simply chose to not tell any registers owners and hope they would just not notice.

If this is the type of service and quality that Elinchrom is giving to the customers, I won't be buying any more of their equipment in the future.

They got me twice. Just thought I'd share.
Any potential buyers out there, beware...

I do get a minor darkness (more of a thin line of haze) at 1/160, but I'll have to wait for my DLites to get back from repair to see how they fare at that speed. Currently using off camera flashes. So maybe some issues there as well? I'll try replacing the transmitter battery as well and see if that helps.

Anyway, glad it isn't just me. I'd hate to have to send this stuff in for another repair. It seems like I'm without my camera, lens, flash or some other piece of equipment at some point for most of the past two years. Argh...
I am just waiting for things to stabilize... yeah, and for enough time, and for enough money, etc...

Thanks for checking the behavior on your end.
I'm not going to worry much about it for now. 1/160 is not far from 1/180.
I'll probably complain to Elinchrom... sort of pissed to begin with that my strobes went out in under 50 shots anyway. I'll give me something to do when those get back.

Yeah, funny! For quite a while I thought that was just the dumbest thing to have on the dial. I now find it helpful, although I'm not sure it is really the best place for it or makes the best use of the dial's real estate.

Set the dial to "X". This is the Flash X-Sync mode. Highest flash sync.
See Page 160 of the K10D manual.

If a PTTL flash is in the hotshoe, I believe you can also get this value in manual mode.

You can get to 1/180 in manual and TV mode. It is also possible in other modes where the shutter speed might otherwise reach above 1/160 on its own. The camera sensing a flash limits the shutter speed to 1/180.

I just hooked up a dumb flash (Promaster with Pentax TTL module) So not totally dumb, but certainly not capable of doing anything funky like high speed sync, etc... It has modes 1/16, full and ttl. I leave it in 1/16 most of the time. It will work fine at 1/180 when connected in the hotshoe.



Flash - normal shooting modes. (standard first curtain mode, if any available)
Camera - AV, TV, or manual. Lets choose manual.
Aperture, varies, as it should.
Shutter speed - set to 1/180 if available, or set to X-Sync mode to force 1/180.
Let me know if you need other camera settings, if they might affect anything.

Yeah, the K10D goes to 1/180.
Therefore I thought if the remote can handle a camera that has a sync speed of 1/250 or higher, it should handle the slower K10D speed. I understand the physical shutter mechanism just isn't capable of moving any faster, thus the need to do funky games in order to reach exposure times of 1/4000, etc... (i.e. shutter speed != exposure time)

The x-sync speed of 1/180 seems to work well with the 360/540 flashes (in hotshoe as well as wireless) and with a non-PTTL dumb flash used in the hotshoe. So it seems that the remote trigger is causing some sort of delay and I'm not sure how it keeps up with cameras capable of reaching higher shutter speeds.

I would think if it were a camera issue with the shutter mis-timing or being slowed down for some reason, that I would see similar issues with the flashes when used without the remote.


BTW, saw the G9 Strobist entry earlier this morning. Pretty cool what those electronic shutters will do.