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.

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.

Yeh, I got a set of 5cm ones. It is worth it for the future, if you going to be adding more flashguns in the future you might get others that are taller/wider.

540fgz has fairly large flash head compared to others. Plus if you are going to be using snoots and other such addons you might need that extra 1cm.

There is an addon called Color Management for Firefox. It will make the image look correct on your screen in the browser.

Update

Called them up today. Lady on the phone told me they started the servicing Pentax since Monday the 4th and they got a bit of a backlog it seems.

She said flashgun might take less time to repair than a camera.

Will give them a call next week to find out more.

Hey,

Which version of Aperture are you using? I have Aperture 2 and it works with my PEFs just fine.

And yes, the RAW support comes from OS. I don't know exactly how back those updates but Leopard supports it.

Sound like I might be one of the first to send something over there. As it's only a flashgun it might not take as long as a camera repair I hope.

I'll keep this thread updated with any info about the process.

Hi All,

Today I ran into a problem with my af-540fgz where flash zoom jammed and when unit is switched on it makes a racket and when LCD eventually turns on after sliding down the modeling switch, the zoom button no longer functions. It doesn't function in any mode.

I ran up SRS and they advised I send it for repair. I ran up pentax and they emailed me form and I packed it up and sent it to
JOHNSONS PHOTOPIA LTD
HEMPSTALLS LANE
NEWCASTLE-UNDER-LYME
STAFFORDSHIRE
ST5 0SW

My question is, did anyone have experience with this problem and how long roughly does it take to get your gear back from this place? I read a few posts about how this is a common problem with 540 flash but I got very varied info about return times, on the phone Pentax said 8 days turn around but email said 15-20 days and SRS said upto 28 days.

Hi there,

There is an excellent website that will tell you all you need to know about manual flash operation with radio triggers of any kind.

it's Strobist, address is http://strobist.blogspot.com/

But to answer your question as briefly as I can.

Info is for Indoor use.
If you want to light a subject with any of the two types of umbrella's, you need to set your camera into manual mode, set your shutter to 1/125 (safe setting), set you ISO to 400. ISO setting is one of the ways to control your flash power output, the higher the iso the less work your flash has to do to light subject. Your aperture can start with something like F4 or F5.*.

Place your umbrella say right of your subject with flash and wireles trigger attached. Set it into manual mode, then set power level to 1/16th. Place your umbrella about 1 meter away from the subject, or even half a meter from your subject.

Give it a test shot. If it's too dark, do one (only one) of the following,
open up aperture OR move umbrella closer to subject OR set power of flash to 1/8th power OR set ISO higher. DO this in reverse if you have too much light, ie lower settings.

What I just described might be a little bit cryptic but this is what you need to do to roughly get a half decent shot so I suggest you read that strobist blog for more info.

good luck

Just tried the flash in C1 instead of C0. The Sigma flash doesn't not fire in this mode at all.