Originally posted by jhonny0099 
. So much for a "p-TTL standard", makes it hard to trust anything now.
Pentax certainly never claims that there is a "P-TTL" standard. Like all camera makers that I'm aware of, they treat their digital flash communication protocol as Proprietary Secret Sauce. Sigma, Metz, Promaster, and Icorp/Tumax figure out how to make flashes that work with it by reverse engineering, not by reading specifications documents — neither open nor licensed.
Anyway, since the reverse engineering isn't rocket science, I don't think there's any real reason to be scared, except that as we see here the protocol can change, either to make things better for Pentax flashes — or to discourage the third-party vendors.
Now, given the weaknesses in Pentax's current flash lineup, they pretty much
need the third-party flashes to compete with Nikon or Canon. I think it'd be completely reasonable of them to license the protocol to Metz, or completely outsource flash production to them. But, I don't think that's in line with the way Pentax (or any of the Japanese camera companies) does things. Maybe it'll change with Ricoh, but I'm not holding my breath.
So, given that, I'd stick to the Metz flashes that can be upgraded via USB, or resign yourself to occasionally sending in Sigma flashes for upgrades. Promaster seems less on the ball with updating their older models for new cameras; I need to check back with them about the 7200EDF and 7400EDF — it's been a year since I checked. (Wow, time flies!)
The new Tumax DPT5xx series apparently also is capable of end-user USB upgrades. I haven't seen one in person yet. It'll be interesting to see if this trickles down to the Vivitar/Sakar/Digital Concepts models — and if, for those models, you're able to go directly to Icorp or whether you need to get tech support from Sakar (good luck with that!).
Post #8 by rrwilliams64
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