Hello Jaycee

Hot pixel removal is standard in Capture One (even the LE version) Saves me a bundle of time processing, especially for ISO1600 and ISO3200 shots
Matt

James,

That's what I meant - turn off all flash symbols on the *ist-D body LCD.

No mystery at all - the AF360 will be doing a pre-flash. Always. It's just really hard to see it - there are actually two bursts of light, very, very, very close together, but still two. Ordinarily they are so close together it makes no difference in shooting But it makes a difference to "magic eye" slave flashes

The best way to see it is to hold the camera slightly away from you and fire the shutter. You should be able to just discern the two bursts, well, at least I can!

As I mentioned, the only way to completely disable preflash is to use the "A" or "M" modes on the flash, which are only available when you have the body on "M"

As you said, it was just that you had red eye reduction enabled (little eye symbol on the LCD) on the body which increases the time delay between the preflash and main flash.

Have fun!
Matt

James,

Ok, here's the full answer

1. If you have the AF360 in P-TTL, and the body in Green,P,Av,Tv then there will always be a preflash. Usually the preflash is milliseconds before the main flash - it's difficult to tell that a preflash fired. But then I do have friends who manage to blink at the preflash and always have their eyes closed; and "dumb" slaves will always trigger off the preflash. But...

2. If you enable "red eye reduction" on the body, there is something like a 1 second pause between the preflash and the main flash. Maybe this is what you experienced.

3. If you set the body to "M" (fully manual) you then have the option of setting the mode of the AF360 to "A" or "M". In both cases there will be no preflash, though you have to make a few more calculations

4. Putting the camera in "M" and the AF360 in P-TTL still works. In fact I tried this with an indoor image where I wanted to preserve the outside light and the shadow it cast, but still have some indoor flash to balance it. It was a doddle with M mode - I spot metered to work out the exposure difference between shadow and outside light. Then used P-TTL. Only needed two or three test shots and I managed to get a perfect exposure.

So, for your needs, setting the body to have no flash indications at all (especially not the red eye reduction!) and powering up the AF360 should be fine. If you can't get the balance automatically, do it fully manual - you can get anything you want then

Hope that helps!
Matt

Hmmm. You can and you can't

I'll have to get back to you on this because the answer is not simple, and I better try it out for real first

Matt

I think they had that as well

Found the website

http://www.mediachance.com/digicam/cablerelease/

Actually that Heath Robinson affair looked like another I saw on the 'net. They took some modelling plastic (like plasticine that sets), made a model of the camera (it was a pocket digital), wrapped the gunk around it and built a little "holder" to put an old fashioned screw thread release on.

Time to get out the sticky backed plastic, velcro, and old washing up bottles

Matt

Dent Arthur Dent,
There are two ways for the lens to communicate. The first is the "old" way using the binary connections as outlined in the method you linked to.
The second way is via the digital "Data" contact where the body interrogates the lens using some kind of serial link.

I suspect the *ist-D uses just the "Data" link for matrix metering (quote taken from the small print of the site you linked to):
But it doesn't exactly say whether matrix metering in manual mode is possible... why don't you email Mark Roberts directly??

Matt

Christophe,

TTL is Through The Lens metering.
P-TTL is Preflash Through The Lens Metering. In this mode a small burst of flash occurs first, the camera judges the exposure and corrects the aperture before firing the real flash. Generally it gives better exposure, but does mean that you get two flashes (which confuses any "magic eye" cells for slave flashes).

The AF360FGZ is the most recent flash gun. You can purchase it for around £180 in the UK. It's a very nice, compact and powerful flashgun. I use this and a Metz 50MZ5 with my *ist-D.

The AF360FGZ is the only flashgun that has high speed sync - which is useful for outdoor fill in flash. The flash will sync at higher shutter speeds (I think 1/250s... will have to check the manual). It does also support manual, "old fashioned" automatic, and wireless (dumb slave and full control from an *ist-D only).

Hope that helps.
Matt

Flink,
As to calibration, try WiziWYG from www.praxisoft.com - available for PC and Mac, and free It handles LCDs very well, and I've had quite pleasing resuts with it.

Try adjusting the colour noise suppression Perhaps C1 is thinking the rust is colour noise...

Matt