ARRRGGGHHH!!!! Its a bug in the pop-up wireless flash communication!

If I put my af360fgz on the hotshoe of my K10D everything works perfectly!! The exposure is identical for all apertures... well, at least until I get down to f1.4 where the ambient lighting this morning is stronger than the lowest flash power.

I am getting sooooo frustrated with this stuff. Dunno how Pentax compares with other brands in this area but its certainly enough to make me look at other stuff. Unfortunately I have dug myself a deep hole filled with Pentax gear. I guess when I blow the wad on the DA* lens I'll be getting another flash as well. Why even bother with the firmware upgrade? ARRRRGGHH!!! and double-aaarrggh!!!

Oh yeah, FYI, the 360 on the hotshoe is in wireless/control mode. This way the flash does not affect the exposure. If the remote flash is off and the aperture dialed down, the image is almost black. So I know the flash is only being used for wireless communication.


How does one go about making a bug report to Pentax?
Is it even worth it? (Like reporting a bug to Microsoft? )

Yes, wireless flash is working. The only thing that doesn't seem right is the lack of adjusting the light output to maintain a proper exposure.
Of course, putting the camera in P mode rather than Av seems to make the flash adjust its output.
So I'm sort of lost on how exactly wireless PTTL works... if there is such a thing.

Since I am in a controlled environment I could go to manual, but I'm trying to get a handle on PTTL so that I can feel more comfortable in a less controlled environment. One where I cannot constantly be playing with manual settings on the remote flash.

Anyway,
1. No, using 50mm. Still, one could defelect the pop-up flash completely and still maintain wireless. As long as some light reaches the slaves. (in full manual mode I need to put a dumb slave on the hotshoe. I often have to deflect the light so that it doesnt affect the scene. (dumb flash has no concept of control or master, etc... so it always affects the scene in some way)

2. Yep, set to wireless.

3. Yep Correct channel.

4. No, remote flash is set to Slave. This is the only configuration in which the flash will work. Master is intended, I believe when it is on the hotshoe. I believe this is like the pop-up Fire in wireless Flash modes. (either Master or Control, one will affect the environment, the other will not).
Either way, flash will not fire in Master mode.

5. Side button in in upper position, but this should not affect the flash behavior for anything other the the function of the controlling buttons on the back of the unit.

6. I leave this setting at Digital. The main controlling factor of the light output in wireless should be the flash-to-subject distance not camera-to-subject distance. This setting has no effect.


Thanks

Sorry... I've read the very nice sticky post about PTTL, but I am still thoroughly confused...

I am doing a still life setup rather than live people or animals, so I thought I'd give the PTTL a go rather than full manual. (I have things working well with manual, but always have to try to learn something new)

It seems that I cannot get any form of expected behavior from the flash.
I thought that PTTL was supposed to try to balance out the lighting with all sorts of pre-flashes, etc... so that the exposure would be "correct".

I have the 540fgz on a light stand set to PTTL, using wireless.
On the K10 I am using Av mode. As I change any setting, the lighting changes drastically as if the flash was on manual and no communication was being done. Is that expected?
i.e.
changing ISO
ISO100 f/1.4 the image sees a bit dark.
ISO200 f/1.4 the image seems a bit less dark.
ISO400 f/1.4 the image seems a about right.
ISO800 f/1.4 the image seems a bit a bit too bright.

or
changing aperture
ISO100 f/1.4 the image sees a bit dark.
ISO100 f/2.8 the image seems a bit more dark.
ISO100 f/5.6 the image is even more dark.
ISO100 f/11 the image is way way too dark

The flash is never exhausting its energy, as it only takes about a second to re-charge. I would expect at some point it would fire full power in order to attempt to get a decent exposure from the camera settings.

Amazingly, if I put the camera in P mode, something changes to allow the image to be more consistently exposed (not perfect, but better). The flash will eventually exhaust its power and take several seconds to recharge if I crank the aperture down real small. So there is some noticeable change in flash behavior when the camera is in P mode.


Am I expecting behavior only found with TTL? If so, what good does wireless mode really give? And why does it seem to behave better when the camera is in P mode. I guess if it is expected behavior I'll deal with it, but it just doesn't make sense and I'm sure I must be doing something wrong or missing some small piece of info.

Any ideas?

Hopefully I just didn't miss something simple in the sticky post, but I am just not making sense of the flash behavior.


Flash: af-540fgz
Camera: K10D with firmware 1.30


THANKS!

Pete, if you haven't used SilkyPix on noise-ridden RAW files yet, be sure to read over "10.1.8 Creating Extremely Clear Image" of the SilkyPix documentation. It makes all the difference in the world.
I was working on a particularly bad image (noise wise) for an hour. Very frustrated, I found this chapter. Within five minutes I had a very usable photo.

I thought Lightroom, CS3, etc... had better default handling of noisy images. Although, I had trouble getting images as good as SilkyPix with those tools after following those guidelines.

No lynching here....
I have a branded $20 circular polarizing filter. Works just fine.
I am positive that more expensive filters will give sharper images, and they will most certainly give a better polarizing effect...

I do not know if the increase in quality outweighs the price for my uses. Although quite honestly, as I become a better photographer, I am noticing the shortcomings of these types of products...
Once I get better lenses I will probably also start to think about filers that match that quality. i.e. hardly worth putting a $200 filter on my current $10 kit 18-55mm lens!!


BTW, I also have a inexpensive linear polarizer on the K10D and I have not seen adverse effect on metering or focus.

I forget exactly where I read it, Strobist perhaps? but I thought I read that many current cameras have an electronic shutter that usually maxes out at about 1/125sec or something, (perhaps sync speed?), and any higher shutter speed is obtained by sampling the sensor.

Anyway, is it possible that the DSLR works in both worlds? Or did I totally miss the boat on that one?

I use SilkyPix all the time for PEF files... one of the reasons I bought it was that it supported PEFs before I upgraded Photoshop. I also like the way SilkyPix works and its end result more than other software, but that is obviously secondary to being able to read the file format in the first place.

1. Lossless compression is just that. There should be no changes.

2. Some time is spent on compression, but less time on writing to the card. I don't know which takes longer; The internal compression of data or the writing of an additional 6M to the card. It is possible that compressing and writing the PEF is faster than writing the DNG itself.
Certainly compressing to a jpeg and writing 1/8 the data is much faster than saving the full raw data.
I haven't done any tests, it would be interesting to hear how many PEFs can be taken compared to DNG before the buffer slows things down.

Are you cropping the images?
What size are the originals?

It appears the pixel count is perhaps too low, or converted from a lower number. I've accidentally cropped images and forgot to check when Photoshop sometimes puts a default value of 72dpi in the field.
If you are cropping only slightly smaller than full size, this will take a full size image and turn it into crap.
I make sure I leave the 'Resolution' field blank so that there is no pixel conversion (r3eduction or increasing).

Could you mean an effect similar to that done by this guy?
http://www.ephotozine.com/u46007/gallery

Look at like page five of his gallery. I saw another guy do similar things but they were brighter and more "plastic" as you say. I just cannot find them. This is close to what I'm picturing from your description.

Mainly, is this close to what you're trying to describe?