And do this carefully... without touching the meter probes or contacts with your fingers
Matt

Andrew,
I understand what you mean - and yes, it's probably an issue (the Pentax AF540 misbehaves if one of the dedicated pins is shorted).

However, I'm sure I have seen adapters that are plastic except for the centre pin contact. Just can't remember where on earth I've seen them

If I can find any current ones I'll reply on this thread. However, you may get better results if you phone round second hand camera shops (e.g. mxv.co.uk , clocktowercameras.co.uk etc). If you explain that you need plain-old-PC connection for a dedicated flash they may just have something lying around in a junk box

Matt

Just looked some bits up...

"Hama 6952" will provide a PC cord to centre pin
"Kaiser 1300" will create a PC socket for the Pentax.

You could put the two together... but it'd be a bit wobbly!
Probably the best suggestion is to use the Kaiser 1300 (or equiv) to make a PC socket on the Pentax, and get an angled flash bracket with PC cord to plug in.

Also, see this thread: https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2620&highlight=safe+flash+v...
HTH!
Matt

Welcome to the board

I've just checking this list of measurements and it would seem the Vivitar 550FD will be just fine.

I can't remember the voltage limit on the Pentax dSLRs, but I'm sure the Pentax was higher than most other brands

Since your guns are Ricoh and Canon dedicated (:shock you should be able to get some kind of hotshoe adapter that will mask the contacts off. Are the Ricoh ones in the same format as the Pentax? (I know that Ricoh used the K-mount... maybe they used the Pentax flash configuration too?? ) EDIT: Just seen that the 550FD does Canon & Ricoh in one configuration, so forget that idea!

You could connect using PC-connectors and a cheap little hotshoe-to-PC-connector adaptor.

Preflash won't come into it. You just need to connect the flash to the Pentax hotshoe and it'll work just fine

I'll see if I can dig anything else up off the 'net....
Matt

Haven't we done this here before....?
Matt

Trouble with patents is that anyone can file almost anything (even things that don't actually work, or that have been done before). The US patent archives is an evident demonstration of that!

A patent is only really worth something once it's been tested in court

Matt

It will do half of the Expodisc

The Expodisc was designed as an exposure tool first. The white balance followed. You can use it as an incident light meter because the lens arrangement (like bobbles of plastic) on the front will collect the light and spread it evenly across the frame. It works very well, and because the light sources are averaged as well it gives a good WB.

The "Expodisc replacement" you linked to just does the WB. (The Lee filter caps will do the same thing.)

You will get a better WB off a QPcard, compared to the "replacement" or Lee caps

Matt

Had a quick look -
Nearly all down to White Balance.

If you use AWB (Auto White Balance) the camera is making certain assumptions about the type of image you are photographing - and all-black doesn't usually come into it

The white balance affects the "skew" of the colours. Get the WB wrong and everything gets tinged. (That's one of the benefits of shooting RAW - you can always adjust the WB at the PC).

Another part of it is the black point. If the black point is too high then black objects will look more grey, and if the WB is off as well everything goes seriously pear-shaped!

If you want good colour, you should use a manual white balance (even sampling off a sheet of A4 paper is better than nothing).
The little QPcard is very helpful too - not expensive and easy to carry around.
There's also the Expodisc (which I love), but that's expensive too.

A cheaper Expodisc is the Lee filter caps (three for £3 last time I checked). They're good enough to get a rough colour balance from.

HTH!
Matt

And a crazy shallow depth of field where you breath and the focus point changes

Shooting at f2.4 is beautiful - especially lovely for portraiture. Soft, creamy bokeh - it's absolutely gorgeous!

Sorry to fuel the LBA... but it has a very different rendering to the f1.7. My SMC-F 50/1.7 hasn't seen the light of day for a loooong time

Matt

Yup. Windoze doesn't do colour management
IE7, Firefox etc etc under Windows will always assume it's sRGB - even if there's a profile embedded.

The Mac is another thing

Hence, best to convert to sRGB and then use Save For Web within Photoshop

Matt