K-7 flash performance?

[Edvinas]

I have a question to frank and falconeye:

What about K-7 flash performance? Is metering with flash better? My main concern is bounce flash metering, Pentax severely underexposes while using bounce flash (1-2 stops).

Yesterday I borrowed friends Canon 40D with Canon flash (I think the cheapest one) to take pictures of my K20D and was completely blown away by Canon metering accuracy. K20D + 540FGZ were nowhere near to the accuracy and consistency of Canon combo...

[Unlocker]

Just had a quick play, and only basing this on what I can see on the camera's lcd, but I am perfectly happy with the results, you may think they are under exposed though, and there is a good reason, PTTL exposes flash to not blow the highlights.

Let me give you an example:-

4 weeks ago I helped a friend shoot a wedding, he was shooting with a Canon 450D with a speedlight. Almost every single shot he took of the bride, using the flashgun, was heavily over exposed, dress blown out, didn't look good at all.

I was shooting with K20 / 16-50 and K10 / 60-250. Not one of my shots has a blown out dress, all detail on that dress stands out, but if you look at the whole picture you may say it was underexposed.

Difference is that it is easy to give a little boost, but if the highlights have gone, they're gone. Most people will agree that flash control is behind the competition, but when you know why it does what it does, it is actually extremely useful!

Besides, you can always just dial in +1 compensation and that should solve your problems for you!

[Mystic]

i heard somewhere, that a flash on K-7 can do high speed shooting.. is this true?

as i've heard it can fire 3 shots in together with the camera 5.2 per second shooting and later fires another flash at about 2-3 flash per second.

is this has any truth in it?

thanks

[Unlocker]

The camera I have here is an early build, so this info may be wrong, but I cannot get it to fire at 5FPS even with the flashgun set to manual at 1/64th power, seems to revert down to 3FPS.

Will need to wait until we get a production camera (and read the manual!) to find out if this is a limitation of the camera or not. Hopefully it isn't, as my cousins kit can quite happily blind you at 10FPS!

[falconeye]

Originally Posted by Edvinas

What about K-7 flash performance? Is metering with flash better? My main concern is bounce flash metering, Pentax severely underexposes while using bounce flash (1-2 stops).

I just used bounce flash with diffusor pointing up and subject was 90% a white background.
K-7 and K20D with a Sigma 500 DG Super. Set flash +1EV and overall -1EV (to reduce ambient light). Both K20D and K-7 produced identical results. The white background is at -2EV (middle of histogram, the correct exposure given that it must be regarded gray, i.e., same as w/o flash) and there is a specular highlight which is blown out.

So, for a uniform background, I don't see a problem or difference.

[nulla]

Originally Posted by falconeye

I just used bounce flash with diffusor pointing up and subject was 90% a white background.
K-7 and K20D with a Sigma 500 DG Super. Set flash +1EV and overall -1EV (to reduce ambient light). Both K20D and K-7 produced identical results. The white background is at -2EV (middle of histogram, the correct exposure given that it must be regarded gray, i.e., same as w/o flash) and there is a specular highlight which is blown out.

So, for a uniform background, I don't see a problem or difference.

Thanks heaps for this info


cheers

[mattdm]

Originally Posted by falconeye

I just used bounce flash with diffusor pointing up and subject was 90% a white background.

What about with direct, forward-facing flash? On the earlier models, that's always chosen a much darker exposure than I would (and much darker than it does with the flash tilted up).