Hi Michele,
Welcome to the board!
ROFLMAO!!
I've been called a few things in my time... but never that

I have both the AF360 and AF540... both very fine guns indeed.
The cheapest I've seen the AF360 is around £130. The AF540 is a monster and horrendously expensive

Sigma might be worth looking at... but personally I'd rather go with the AF360 as Sigma do tend to reverse engineer the electronic protocols rather than pay - and this can lead to compatibility problems However, I can't really give you a definitive answer on the Sigma - except I do know there were two versions and only one supports P-TTL.

You are right in saying the regular TTL has been dropped from every Pentax body (it was only on the *ist-D and *ist-DS FWIW).

Sooooo.... I'd still say go for the AF360 and push up the ISO rating on the camera

However, you mentioned that you do "events" and you mentioned the "stage" word... do be aware that any flash will positively kill the ambient lighting and can make stage shots look very flat indeed with harsh shadows. When I do stage work I tend to use either a fast lens and/or a monopod
(I have the 50mm f/1.4 and the 100mm f/2.8 macro - both of which are more than the AF360 :blush

Additionally, it might be worth brushing up on your image processing - I can shoot at ISO3200 or ISO1600 and get great images shooting RAW and using Silkypix. (Alternatively Capture One LE and NeatImage is a good combination, or just NeatImage if you shoot JPG.)

Let us know what you intend shooting and we'll help some more!
Matt

But on the *ist-D (and Z1 etc) where you set the aperture on the body it is effectively constant aperture - except where you want to use it wide open that it
Matt

Well,
I don't know about the Tamron, but I find the Pentax SMC-FA 24-90 a formidable lens! (That is, if you can still find one!)
Resolution is astounding and the colour and contrast are truly "Pentax"
If you ever do go digital, then the 24-90 is a very nice lens to use (don't forget that because of the smaller sensor, you have an effective crop of 1.5x the length).

If you were tempted to go digital and want the pro features, then check out the old *ist-D - it had the grip facilities and can be bought for a snip these days and will still take absolutely superb images. What I can say about digital is this: if you want to get a better working knowledge of exposure etc then digital is the quickest, cheapest, and easiest way to go by far.

Matt

Ah yes, I used that ebay store (Loobylins) to get a replacement *ist-D cup when it went AWOL
Matt

Brian,
I assume you're referring to her shoulder...
You can't use a tool to just "bring back" burnt highlights

Part of the trick is to understand the problem. Always start by looking at the channels individually - the red is what's blown out, and the blue (in this JPG at least) has the most artifacts.

So, that said, I would revisit the RAW and tone it down a touch to see if there's anything left in the red channel - maybe by reducing the exposure, or using AdobeRGB colourspace, or tweaking the colour temperature you'll get some detail back.

Failing that you need to use the stamp tool and on this amount of area it's gonna be tricky to get it to look natural. This is what I'd suggest:
* Create a blank layer on top
* Pick the clone/stamp tool
* Set the opacity to 30%
* Tick the "Sample All Layers"
* Carefully Alt-click and brush with a medium soft brush to rebuild the skin area

Keep doing this until you feel you have the area rebuilt. Then... go away and have a cup of tea (important )
When you come back, toggle the visibility of the cloned layer and see how it improves things. If it's not right, carefully erase and re-stamp.

Now, if the skin texture is fine, but the lighting looks slightly wrong...
* Add another blank layer on top
* Change the layer blend mode to "Soft Light"
* Pick the brush tool
* Set the opacity to 10%
* Pick black/white as the colours (Press "d" on the keyboard)
* Paint black to darken
* Paint white to lighten

Again, you can toggle the visibility of the soft light layer to see if you're going in the right direction.

Hope that helps!
(If you want - I'll take a look at the RAW - just email it )
Matt

Welcome to the board Tim

I'd recommend getting your hands on an old Pentax SMC-M 50/1.7 (or the SMC-A version). These are old manual lenses and allow you to manually select the aperture (and keep the blades open). They're also very, very cheap - I wouldn't be surprised if you pick one up for less than £15.

Reversed onto the 18-55 (or the 40mm) you'll have a pretty excellent macro combination. The reversed lens setup will give you the most astonishing macros.

Hope that helps!
Matt

This is the only reason the "f" will blink...

Unless you have a manual focus "A" series lens and it was on the "A" position, but now is not.

Matt

Maybe, just maybe, it's because Pentax users don't have anything to prove - they're making great images that they love, and/or they're selling them well.

So why enter an image when you're having so much fun

The others are just "wannabes"
Matt

(Tongue in cheek of course!)

The other thing that may be worth thinking about is wavelengths...

I'm not sure what the spectrum output of the flash is, nor what the sensitivity of the light metering electronics is and how that is affected by the spectrum light. Perhaps the camera light metering is seeing UV or IR being reflected that the CCD does not detect?

It would be interesting to know how your little test changes when you bounce the light...
Matt

Shots of dark objects will always cause a problem with metering.

The metering aims to get the subject exposed at middle grey - so a full frame of black will end up grey, while a full frame of white will end up grey as well!!
No camera can tell the difference between black that's brightly lit and white that's dimly lit

You always have to think just a little about the subject and use exposure compensation.
(All cameras will do this )

Understandably that's difficult when shooting ad-hoc, so your best bet is shoot RAW and adjust exposure after the event. When I shoot outdoor subjects with fill in flash the P-TTL works pretty well all the time.

However, if on the other hand you are shooting in a known environment you will find it much easier to switch to fully manual - both manual flash and manual camera. Usually takes me 3 or 4 shots to get the exposure right, then every one after that is bang on. There's a thread or two I've posted on with the "how to"...

AFAIK the metering mode does not affect the P-TTL metering. From what I can tell it's evaluative (the "full screen" always.

But I'll give your comments some thought and see if there's anything else I can add....

Matt