The software allows you to detach the image viewer, but it them becomes only slightly larger than the initial attached version. Hardly helpful!

You can of course fudge around by having a program (such as Adobe Bridge) watch the directory to where these images are stored. You can then open the latest image that way.

But nothing quite as automatic as you would have hoped from this tool. Remote Assist is nice, but I always get the feeling that it was thought of as a hold-over until a third party made something better.

Yes, if you get a hotshoe attachment for the flash, you can fire externally via PC cable. These can be found fairly inexpensively. (The Pentax five wire and hotshoe require you to sell one of your kidneys, but do allow PTTL via wire.)
Anyway, with the standard PC connection the flash is then unable to communicate via PTTL with the camera so you are required to set it manually. At that point you can, of course, dial in whatever you like.


If you're interested in setting manual anyway, try the dumb slave trigger mode. To eliminate cables, I bought a cheap manual flash without even TTL and stuck that on the camera hotshoe and set it for the lowest possible power. I then set the 360/540 in wireless mode (P2 - dumb slave mode) and it fires off any flash it detects.
I use this almost exclusively for my wireless lighting, as PTTL has not been friendly to me.

Note that this setup wont work well with the popup flash as you cannot turn off the pre-flashes and that makes it difficult to use the popup flash as a reliable trigger.
You really have to allow the 360 to be dialed down enough to allow it to flash for both the pre-flash and the final flash. I believe Matt has had better luck getting that to work with popup flash and may have some suggestions if needed... He is either much more skilled or simply more patient than I am. Most certainly both.
So you may want to try that a bit as well while lacking the second flash.

I'll have to have a go with the white paper., I heard a suggestion a while back that the cover made a fair substitution for the Expodisc. But when used alone the white balance was truly horrific.

Paint shop pro has some 16 bit functionality and is not that expensive, although it seems to be getting up there more with every release. Last I used was version 10, they are on 11 now. At the time the color management was pretty awful. Maybe that is better with version 11??

Anyway, if you are doing a lot with layer blending, color alteration and such, 16bit may be necessary. You're just going to get banding and blotchy color very quickly and easily with 8 bit mode.

Fortunately, there are few functions you need to do that really benefit much from 16 bit mode. Think through what you want to do and work in 16 bit mode until you have no choice and bring it down to 8bit for any remaining steps.

If all you were doing was dodge and burn, I'm not sure why such drastic change would be noticed with a conversion down to 8 bit. Did you bring the areas to either end of the spectrum? You may also loose detail quickly if you end up with larger patches of very similar tonality.

Yeah. Although some circular polarizers seem to do a pretty good job from what I hear. My circular polarizer just turns the screen a slightly darker shade of blue.

I picked up my linear used for $10. Its not great, and probably why the screen doesn't go very dark, but it gave some interesting results that I could further adjust using Levels to get what I wanted.

I like the last blue dolphin the most, but the loss of detail is disappointing.

You say you are lighting from below, but can you try to get more even coverage?

An interesting trick if you have a LINEAR polarizer and an LCD monitor is to tip the monitor on its back and use as a light table.
With the linear polarizer, the LCD screen can be made to appear black. Yet the light being refracted through the glass shows up just as pain as day.
For example, this photo is lit only by the monitor displaying Photoshop with some colored squares to give color. I used a monitor privacy screen (one of those that keeps the person next to you from reading your stuff) for this shot, as my polarizer is pretty cheap and left things greenish/grey. But I have seen better results from other people using their polarizer. (remember must be linear, not circular)



Actually if you can dig up one of those privacy screen overlays, no polarizer is necessary. From an angle the whole pane goes black.

Anyway, that might make lighting from below a bit easier than the balancing act it sounds like you're using now.

But that would mean you 'want' a cure? I am just starting to feel the symptoms coming on, and only the bank has complained so far.

Of course I have this constant nagging itch for the DA*. It just wont go away. (hopefully soon?)
Anyway, maybe there is a cream or something to make the pain go away... if for just a little while?

Thanks. I am aware that the frame will always be evaluated to middle grey.
But that is partly what surprises me so much by the results I'm seeing.
I just do not see enough white to appear to make up the difference. Especially when the delta between two frames is a hair's difference of white and it causes a two stop difference in metering.

Anyway, nice to confirm that PTTL uses the full frame for metering. I can work from that and hopefully learn to better predict what will happen.

I do have to agree, in a studio type shoot, I almost always use manual.
1. no pre-flash to disturb the subjects -- thus no half shut eyes.
2. more consistent exposure due to movement that might cause difference in metering.


Thanks

OK, almost hate to bring this one up again but I've been playing around a bit with the 540 flash on my K10D and still having trouble getting proper exposures. I think I've narrowed down the types of shots that cause the confusion but need some clarification/advice, or at least a shoulder to cry on...

I've taken dozens of shots even with bright specular hilights all over the image. Even with things like chrome objects I can get decent images, but put a non-glare person or dog with a tiny specular highlight and the photo is heading for the bin.

OK... so no matter whether I have the exposure setting to spot, center or full screen (whatever the name), the effect is nearly identical.

What I seem to have found is that PTTL metering is somehow done within the inner more-squared rectangle area of the view finder.
All brightness within that area is averaged or otherwise evaluated regardless of other settings.
This really becomes a major problem for high contrast scenes more that for scenes with consistent luminosity.

So... if I have a dark dog laying on a dark carpet (to use my previous examples), and a sliver of white wall creeps into that rectangle the photo is lost.
If I am able to adjust the angle such that the wall fall just a hair outside this rectangle the image is vastly different than when it breaks that line.

Of course being that the sensor isn't square, the possibility to do this and how your image results will varies whether the contrasting area is top/bottom v.s. the sides. (Do I move the frame 15% or 30%.


I suppose it could be that the entire frame is always involved, but the averaging crosses some thresh-hold as the contrasting area breaks those boundaries.

I guess I am rather confused why spot metering doesn't reduce this to any degree. Is PTTL metering of the frame done that differently than metering for a non-flash photo?

Does that make sense?
Am I making sense?
If so, is that behavior normal and can anyone explain why?

Sorry for rambling on. Long day at work, tried to relax with photos, but only ended up frustrated debugging my camera rather than getting shots I wanted.
Hmm, guess that is part of what photography is all about anyway, eh? ...experimenting until you get it right? Guess I'll shut up now and live with it.

Anyway, thanks in advance if anyone can bring any further info on how this works and how to create more consistent photos.