Senior Member Registered: August, 2007 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 233 | | Review Date: February 13, 2017 | Recommended | Price: None indicated
| Rating: N/A |
| Pros: | Unknown | | Cons: | No Longer Supported By Sigma | |
I was going to buy a new old stock unit of this flash, but I had heard there were problems with P-TTL unless you had the latest firmware. I contacted Sigma to ask if a firmware upgrade was a possibility. This is their response:
"Thank you for contacting Sigma USA. Your flash is beyond it’s service life and we no longer have updates for it."
So there. Buy at your own risk.
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Inactive Account Registered: September, 2011 Posts: 6 | | Review Date: May 28, 2012 | Recommended | Price: $250.00
| Rating: 10 |
| Pros: | GN, HSS, wireless, full features | | Cons: | hidden controls | |
very well-made flash with great specs at a good price. fully featured. i got this several years ago and have been using it since without any problems. a very reliable flash. it has about the same power output as pentax 540 fgz with ability to perform popular pttl functions, like hss, wireless pttl. one beef i have is there is no button for hss, but instead you press the left arrow when in pttl mode until it says 'fp' , I guess that is sigma's own name for 'hss'. took me a while to figure that out, almost thought i had a lemon. the one i have is made in japan like most sigma products, can't say about other brands. it's been very reliable for the past 3-4 years and still going strong. highly recommended!
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Site Supporter Registered: December, 2007 Location: Montreal Posts: 1,249
1 user found this helpful
| | Review Date: September 10, 2011 | Recommended | Price: $180.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | powerful, cheap, features | | Cons: | no auto mode, compatibility | |
This is probably the cheapest P-TTL flash that supports HSS (sync higher than 1/180s) and is powerful enough.
But if buy this used, be aware that you may need to send it to Sigma for making it compatible with the latest Pentax bodies. And also to support wireless triggering from the on-board flash. So before buying make sure that it's fully compatible with your camera body. Also when buying pay attention to the model, the DG super is this one supporting all the features, the DG ST is much more basic.
It supports almost all important features except the so-called Auto mode in which the flash determines the exposure rather than the camera. It can be important as sometimes some people find P-TTL unreliable.
The user interface is rather clunky (compared to the very good AF-540), using some features will require the manual. And the manual is really not very good. 2 pages in small characters and really brief explanations.
The tilt-and-swivel feature needs pushing buttons to unlock the head. Annoying but at least the head stay in place (contrary to the AF540) which can be important when using big light modifiers like the Lumiquest.
I recommend the http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/ef500cheatsheet-a4.pdf it's not specifically for Pentax but contains useful information.
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Senior Member Registered: June, 2007 Location: Europe - Belgium - Antwerp Posts: 213 | | Review Date: April 19, 2011 | Recommended | Price: $260.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Powerfull, FP flash | | Cons: | Auto power off system, Lousy manual | |
I would give it a 10 if it didn't turn off after a few minutes. You can turn it of by setting is as remote flash but then I've got problems with the remote triggers.
The manual is more a puzzle to find out what where how and could have made to learning curve to use this flash much easier.
But these are the only min-points I have. I like the flash.
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Loyal Site Supporter Registered: March, 2007 Location: Toowoomba, Queensland Posts: 23,920 | | Review Date: April 24, 2010 | Recommended | Price: $230.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Powerful and versatile, good build quality, multi-functional | | Cons: | Finicky to adjust the flash head angle, needed hardware module to shoot wirelessly | |
For value for money, this flashgun does it all for me.
Not only is it everything the Pentax AF540FGZ is (apart from being slightly less powerful), but it also offers multi-phase strobing for creative action photography. This is not the complete story, however, because the AF540FGZ has a more user-friendly and easier to read interface, with functions much easier to access than the Sigma EF500.
Where I would deduct marks from this fine piece of equipment is the difficulty in being able to quickly adjust the flash head. To adjust it, a button at the back of the unit must be depressed at the same time as the flash head is moved - one button is dedicated to the tilt action, and one for the swivel action. This adjustment requires two hands to get right. As such I would tend not to use this one for fast-action photography, such as weddings to save from having to be stuck trying to quickly adjust the flash head. My AF540FGZ definitely makes such a job easy to shoot in comparison.
That aside, exposure inconsistencies are slightly more evident with this unit compared with the AF540FGZ, both on the K10D and K20D cameras. It works reasonably well in TTL mode with the *ist D camera.
Otherwise, it is versatile and well-constructed for just about any application.
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