This site list a lot of trigger voltages, unfortunately not the Metz 44

http://www.botzilla.com/photo/strobeVolts.html

It's easy enough to measure using a digital voltmeter, even a cheap one, allow the flash to come to full charge and set the meter to Volts, the +ve (Red) probe goes to the centre hotshoe pin and the -ve goes to the contact within the 'groove' of the hotshoe on the flash.

I would think that any current Metz flash will be fine, I have a Metz 48 AF-1 which has a trigger voltage of just 5Volts which is fine. But it's a simple thing to check.

Full Moon tonight and a clear sky - well for an hour it was. So I took the opportunity to try a cheap Paragon 500mm f8 and the Pentax Q, at f8




Image is from the Raw file opened, resized to 1024 X 768 and High Pass sharpening applied in CS6.

If the Pentax Tav mode is available on that camera then you set the aperture and shutter speed and the cameras metering will set the ISO.

Edit:- Ignore my comment above, with a little further investigation it seems that all you have on this camera is Program Mode and Manual. Bridge cameras are designed to be fully auto for people with little photographic knowledge.

sRGB is fine and has enough colour gamut for everything found in nature with the possible exception of the red off poppy petals.

The sRGB colour space is all an 8bit monitor can display, to see what your Raw file really look like (and how it will print, as most printers are at least capable of a 12bit colour gamut)you need to get a 16bit monitor and to view your files in Adobe 1998 colour space, 16bit monitors cost about the same as a decent second hand car, a few thousands of pounds. But the difference in the display and the image you see is huge. It's one of the few things that haven't come down in price, 16bit monitors always come factory calibrated. With a 16bit monitor you can see the difference between an sRGB file and a file saved in Adobe 1998 colour space, and it's quite marked.

Adobe 1998 colour space can show all the colours your camera records, the difference is mainly in the reds and blues.

The ColorMunki software can calibrate for brightness (and contrast)too in the advanced mode, but you need a monitor with a brightness (and contrast) control(s) to calibrate it which are seemingly thin on the ground these days.

If you do calibrate for brightness you will be surprised at how dim your monitor seems, 5 minutes later, when your eyes have adjusted to it, it's fine.

The photo lab I use has a room where they do all their image editing, it's painted matt black, no windows and with very dim lighting, each workstation has a hood over their monitor, it's like walking into a cellar or a badly lit night club. Overkill for the average photographer probably, but it's how the Pro's view your image files and the lengths they feel they need to go to.

The brightness of a print depends on the brightness of the light shining on it, prints reflect the light, the opposite of monitors which emit light.

The ideal conditions for viewing prints is also the opposite of viewing monitors, the conditions you need to view a print are the opposite of how you should be viewing your monitor, prints need a bright room, monitors need a dark room or you get the same problem as using the rear screen of a camera, low contrast etc. Sunlight streaming through a window is a good light for viewing a print, it's the worst kind of light for viewing a monitor.

You can buy desk lamps specially made for viewing prints with a bright intense white light.

Glad to hear it Ken, it certainly is some flashgun.

Have you checked what the trigger voltage is? Most Pentax flash are low voltage, but not all the old ones are, charge the flash up and measure across the hotshoe contacts with an electronic voltmeter, it may be high voltage that will blow the sync transistor in the Q.

Just tried again using Serif Photo Plus as soon as the image is saved Moire disappears. Puzzling, I'm probably missing something.

Edit: Something to do with the re-sizing?

The chair shot above showed signs of Moire in the seat of the chair in the tiff I saved from Photomatix, but it completely disappears when in CS6, even in Bridge.

I know that moire is fairly easy to control in post processing and wonder if it's applied by default in CS6.

Certainly bodes well for the K-5IIs, I'm sure that the lack of an AA filter in the Q adds to the resolution and detail it records, they need far less sharpening than files from all my other cameras, if any.