Originally Posted by sven
I do have a question about TTL. I bought the 540 flash, and in the manual it shows a TTL mode, but when I cycle through the modes it only shows P-TTL. It seems to expose fine, but given all the problems people have been having with P-TTL I'd like to know how to set it to TTL since that is one of the advantages of the *istD. I also have an Olympus FL-36 flash which seems to work fine on the Pentax. I normally would have gone for the 360 flash, but no swivel! I couldn't believe it. The 540 looks like a nice flash, although it is positively HUGE on the *istD! I've already modified it by gluing the pin in the up position (Elmer's white), and filling the hole on the *istD with the same glue so I won't have the flash deciding on its own to stay pinned to the camera. Works great, and I like redundancy! The wireless capabilities should be fun too.
Steve
When you mount a P-TTL capable TTL flash onto the *ist D, it would choose P-TTL automatically and by no means you change force the camera to use plain old TTL auto flash again. However, there is a way to make the flash, e.g., the 360, to work in auto flash-sensor (non-TTL) mode, that is, to put the camera in M mode and then you can select M or Auto in the flash's control panel.
If you want plain average and predictable results, just use M mode in the body and set Auto in the flash, it will provide quite satisfactory consistent and fairly accurate results.
Still, I found the traditional Pentax TTL flash used with the *ist D do give most accurate results which this combo is the most reliable. With *ist DS, it overexposes sometimes. I used to use my *ist D with my AF240FT to shoot some wedding functions and put the camera in jpeg mode and the results were all quite good (better than and brighter than when the *ist D was used to shoot under daylight - which underexposure would occur).
In contrast, *ist D in P-TTL mode is just a joke for the exposure accuracy and consistency. It sometimes underexposed seriously and sometimes overexposed quite much and burnt all the highlights! :-(