It'll only work with two AF360 or AF540.
The Metz does TTL, not P-TTL. There is a complete protocol that goes between the camera and flash (or flash-to-flash in this case).

The only thing you can do with a Metz is put the Metz on the body, and set the AF360 to "Slave 2" (dumb mode) and use M or A on the flash.
Matt

AFAIK, it's not actually a laser in the flash guns. At least it doesn't appear to be coherent light.

The AF360 projects quite a large grid pattern - it's not just a single dot. The aim isn't to illuminate the subject, but to project this contrasting pattern of near IR light onto the subject so there's enough contrast to focus.

It's quite complex as to when it turns on too.

I think all the AF guns have the focus assist, including most third party dedicated AF flashes. (My Metz has the "SB" mode too)

Matt

Why do you think that won't pop your wireless unit too?!

If you have a sync lead already, why don't you investigate a socket to take the other end of the Sunpak sync lead, and then connect the socket to the wireless flash unit? You've got more chance of getting a 2.5mm stereo socket to work, especially if you only connect the tip and sleeve (and leave the middle alone).

But I still reckon you stand a very good chance of blowing the snot out of the wireless
(Unless you provide some extra circuitry to limit the trigger voltage.)

Matt

Having spent a good while whittling down my lenses, and trying others out, I have a set that I find excellent.
Funnily enough they all have eight aperture blades, and I don't think this is a coincidence. Here's the list:

• DA 16-45
  FA 24-90
  FA 80-320
  F 100/f2.8 macro
  A 50/f1.4
  

Just wish I had appreciated the quality of Pentax glass (esp. bokeh, colour, and contrast) sooner

Now all I've got to try is one of the 9-bladed Limited lenses

Matt

EXIF data: ISO200, 1/180s at f8, 16mm

Taken with (I think) a Cokin P121S (or could've been a P121F), angled to cover the sun and bring it down a little.
As I mentioned, this was only really possible in RAW. I processed two exposures out of the one RAW file and combined them

Oh yes, and watch your eyes when taking into the sun - don't look at the sun directly!!

Matt

Actually I can't remember seeing CA in the 16-45. Must be there, at least a bit, or maybe I haven't had a major problem with my images.

Check out my gallery: http://www.pbase.com/mattmatic/scenery
The first 4 images are SMC DA16-45 shots. The first had no filters or anything, the other three had ND grads.

Here's one of them to show you what it's up to:




Taken nearly straight into the sun, even though there was an ND grad.
(Processed in Capture One - three exposures output from the one RAW file, then hand blended with layer masks in PS-CS2)

Out of all the lenses I've contemplated selling, the 16-45 is definitely not one of them. It's staying

Matt

Reckon it must be a region thing.
The *ist-DL2 is not available in Europe.

Featured differences between DL & DL2 are available here:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0601/06012701pentaxdl2.asp

Hope that helps.
Matt

Peter: thanks for the offer. Not sure if I can make it...
In a nutshell:

* AdobeDNG is open. Works with most RAW convertors, and is extensible (ie can support any fangled bits and pieces a manufacturer cares to add, without confusing the normal convertors)

* The RAW data can be stored uncompressed - ie huge file sizes - or compressed. Adobe DNG specifies Huffman-lossless-encoding for compression. Instead of 12Mb+, the RAW file goes down to around 4Mb. Means more images on a card

Huffman encoding is unlike JPG or MP3 (which both compress, but do so by throwing away bits they think you won't notice). It's kind of a binary shorthand - everything you put in can be retrieved. (ie it is lossless).

It's a small problem for computers since they like to work in bytes (8-bits), or multiples of a byte (2 bytes, or 4 bytes). Huffman encoding requires the CPU to work in single bits - so there's a lot of thrashing around. There are some neat tricks that can be done to speed things up though... but even if you don't speed it up, you are trading against the time to write to the card - which is smaller because there's less to write.

So, patent issues notwithstanding (and I believe there aren't issues for plain Huffman encoding), Adobe DNG with Huffman encoding is a good thing

You may remember the LZH compression for the PC. Lempel-Ziv is the "LZ" part - which identifies repeated blocks of bytes, and the "H" is the Huffman part to further pack the results.

Whooops. That was going to be in a nutshell... sorry for the extra detail

More detail here: http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/pdfs/dng_spec.pdf
(The DNG Specification) It's page 15, and they call it "Lossless Huffman JPG". When you run Adobe's stand-alone DNG convertor, it uses this - so a Pentax PEF gets seriously shrunk

Matt

Golfdiesel - one of the first manufacturers (AFAIK) to support AdobeDNG is Samsung.
With the combined efforts of Pentax and Samsung, I'm seriously hoping that DNG is on the firmware wish list... that is DNG with Huffman encoding which losslessly compresses the RAW data (but you need a bit of processor power for it).
The Huffman encoding is optional in DNG, and the Samsung camera does not do it (presumably because the CPU is not up handling bit streams).

Believe me, I've made these points known to Pentax
Perhaps if anyone is going to Focus in the UK later this month they can pop into the Intro2020 stand (where Pentax UK will be) and kindly mention some of these points to Pentax
Just a thought.

Matt

Hi all,
Thought this might interest/amuse someone:
http://tinyurl.com/dq2mo

Matt