Gimmick or useful item for receptions and the like? (Assume possession of a suitable PTTL lead)

link

Thanks for the link. Just ordered one from 7 day.

I have just acquired a Metz 58 AF-1 (only just secondhand, at £125) and here's the question.

I have been attracted to the thought of constructing a ring flash. I've got a few bits together but I can't decide whether to make a tunnel from the 58 AF-1 work to the reflector, or use a cheaper flash and fix it into the reflector permanently.

If anyone else is attracted to the idea, I found some 32cm aluminium mixing bowls that look like they'll make good reflectors in a 99p shop. That's pretty cheap. I bought three, and might try to see if I can also knock up a 'beauty dish'.

Thoughts on whether it's all worth it and owt else will be welcome

Well, I had decided to upgrade from my Fuji 9600 (a great camera, still got it), I went into my local toy shop and looked at Pentax, Nikon, Canon, and Sony.

Sony I more or less ruled out as I will not willingly buy anything with that name on it. It got a fair hearing though, as much as I could anyway.

I decided that I wanted the self cleaning aspect of the viewfinder, in body anti shake, and a few other odds and sods that I forget for now. They all mattered, and I spent an age going through them.

In the end, the only logical choice seemed to be Pentax. I bought a K200D as it seemed the best bang for the bucks. All the others were lacking in some aspect that I felt was either desireable or necessary.

An odd thing is, there seems to be only a reltivelysmall number of add ons for Pentax, whereas all the others are snided out with choices. This is a good, although frustrating, thing, as it saves me money as I can't buy things that I just know I don't need.

So, current kit, K200D, 18-55 lens, Sigma, 24-135, Tamron 70-300, Pentax 50mm f1.4, 'A' teleconverter, 500mm Tamron mirror lens, 300 Cosinon mirror lens, and a bantle of older flashguns plus one home studio kit. Absolutely cracking stuff, particularly the Sigma.

One of my better choices, going Pentax.

I've been wondering if there is such a thing available. Much like a hot shoe adaptor, but will electrically isolate the flash from the camera so that a high voltage flash could be used safely.

I know that a wireless trigger would do the job, but a neat hot shoe adapter could be a useful no fuss gadget to have handy sometimes.

Can't figure this out. I've looked at the manual, honest.

With the above camera, I have two mirror lens.

1) Tamron SP Adaptall 2 PK mount 500mm f8
2) Chinon T2 PK mount 300mm f 5.6

On AV, the exposure seems OK with the Tamron, but the Chinon seems to need a full two stops exposure adjustment, and even then it's darkish.

So, I can't help but feel I'm missing something. How do I get the Chinon to work please? It doesn't seem a bad lens otherwise.

That's it. Microprism. I hate getting older!!! (On second thoughts, considering the only known alternative, I'll try and put up with it.)

Well, I dragged off to my usual test site for a bit of a session. The testing was fairly 'quick and dirty' without checking many aperture settings.

First impressions are that it's going to stay in for a while at least.

Autofocus was unaffected and worked fine. If anything, it was a shade better than manual focus. Manual focus was fairly good on my 2 mirror lens (300mm f5.6, 500mm f8 ). The split screen would black out one half on these lens unless you got your eye exactly square. Auto exposure seemed unaffected too. Having said that, it was useable, and did seem to work accurately.

The split screen and speckly bit (can't remember the name) seem disproportionally large, and I suspect that they are patterned from a full frame 35mm.

In all, I would say that unless you use manual focus lens at least fairly often, I wouldn't bother, but if you do, then it seems worth considering.

Well, I've been hanging my nose over a split screen focussing screen on my K200D, and a while back I ordered one from eBay. It arrived in fairly good order, but with no instructions, a while ago and I've been nerving myself to fit it since then.

A trip to the zoo today convinced me that focussing was not as good as it should be (human error?), so I took the plunge.

Various web guides all seemed to be a little unclear, and for quite a while I was dithering and fiddling, until I pulled the right bit in the right direction, and it all fell to bits! Not exactly, but for a split second that's how it felt (hence the title of the post!). I knew this was going to be expensive if I cocked it up.

Well, the new one is in, and it seems to be OK. I have a few reservations until I've done some daylight images on a tripod. First impressions though are it's a bit darker that the standard one, but I seem to be picking up the focus a little better than when I was using manual on the old screen. Autofocus seems unaffected. It's on centre spot at present, and I'm still getting the small red indicator to let me know it's on OK.

I'll report further when I've had a tablet and a lie down (and done some daylight images on a tripod)

Dodge,

Given you invited offers, an offer of £40 on an initial price of £50 is a serious offer, albeit not as 'serious' as if I had said £60 perhaps. The Paypal issue was mentioned only as a way of payment for convenience and speed.

Had you raised the issues of insurance and Paypal as an explanation why you might think my offer was too low, I might have been minded to up the offer. There was certainly no need to dismiss my offer as not being serious, and to further emphasise that opinion in a second post. An offer of £20 might well have justified such a response maybe.

Anyhow, if your 'someone serious' has not completed to your satisfaction, please let me know, and if you give me an indication of what you might regard as a 'serious' offer, I may make it.

Regards