Interesting spec. 50-6400 ISO, HD video and sound recording, multiple aspect ratios (including square), enormous zoom range, mechanical and digital image stabilization..

The AF360FGZ was designed primarily to work with the MZ-S but I'm sure the interface of the AF540FGZ is similar, if not identical. The Latter flash was of course released well after Pentax ceased production of the MZ-S.

I think Pentax may have just been covering their own rear ends with their recommendations as to which flash types can be used in combination.

I'm willing to be proved wrong but I can see no reason why FTZ & FGZ flashes can't be used in combination for the lesser automated modes, including TTL. I'm 99.999 percent certain that they will work fine in fully manual mode.

If you have a *istD, *istDS, or *istDS2 body you could test the combo as those bodies support TTL. The later bodies can't be used for TTL as it's not supported.

Welcome.

Can you provide a link to the articles that suggest this? I can't see any reason not to mix them.

The only 'problem' might be that if you use the FGZ on camera in P-TTL mode and the FTZ off-camera in slave mode, the FTZ will trigger on the pre-flash and might not fire on the image exposing flash. If you set the FTZ power to less than 1/2, it should fire on both the pre-flash and the image exposing flash.

If you use everything in manual there should be no problem at all. If you want to fit the FTZ to the camera and have the FGZ as a slave you'll have to set it to slave mode 2 (dumb slave mode).

Perhaps you could explain exactly what set up you had in mind. Will you use radio triggers?

Hope that helps.

It's not just you, believe me. The more and more I think I know, the more and more I realize I don't.

I'm happy to use the magic bits and just accept that they work. I don't need to know how.

Thanks Mike. I was pleased with the result, especially having never encountered such poor and variable lighting conditions. I was itching to use a flash but that was not an option. Some of the horses didn't even like us being close to them, a flash would have sent them crazy.

My son has regular work from the TVRC and he's really looking forward to the summer when the events will be held outside. Shame he's only got a Canon though. I tried to bring him up proper, and obviously failed.

Don,

I tried the barter system (Bartercard) in the early days of my IT business. It didn't work for me. The problem was that there were plenty of customers within the Bartercard system for my goods and services, but nobody was offering goods or services that I would use.

You need a white reference to set white balance in camera, and a grey/gray card for exposure. Most grey cards are double-sided, white/grey.

In PP, you can use an 18% grey card for white balance, but not in camera as far as I know.

If your lighting is a more or less constant temperature, for PP white balance, just take an image of the grey card in the prevailing lighting, then take the rest of your shots. In PP, set the WB for the grey ard image, then copy it to the remainder.

The problem I had in the show jumping arena was that the temperature of the light constantly changed from shot to shot so it became necessary to adjust each image.

Amin,

bees don't sting indiscriminately. It costs them their lives so it's of no advantage to them.

Most bees can be handled with care. This time of year when they are still cold and slow, let one crawl onto your hand/finger and move it to a better position photographically. It will not sting you unless you seriously annoy it.

Wasps are quite different creatures, treat them with respect, or a well aimed swat.

Nice composiotions Mike but they all look very dark to me. I can see no shadow detail at all. Was that intentional?

I have the DA* 300mm and AF1.7 T/C and the results seem very good. I don't use the combination very often and can't find the images I've taken so far. I'll take some soon for comparison. I think the image qualities of the 200mm and 300mm are similar enough to make no difference for this purpose Don.