[Jonathan Mac]

I have a couple of old manual Pentax flashes (AF200T) that I use off-camera & were dirt cheap and they work fine in manual mode, and a new Yongnuo which is also fully manual. I´ve seen some of the newer flashes available, I think they date from the nineties. They´re Af400FTZ & AF500FTZ models. They look snazzier than what I have but I don´t know if they´re compatible with Pentax DSLRs and if they will work in automatic modes.

Can anybody tell me what these models are missing compared to their newer, made-for-digital cousins?

Many thanks

[Ole]

The FTZ flashes do not support P-TTL, which is the method Pentax DSLRs uses for metering flash light through the lens. So you can use these old flashes either in manual mode (you do the exposure settings) or in Auto mode (the sensor in the flash will be used for metering but the camera can set the exposure).

The exception to the above is that Pentax' very first DSLR series, the *istD/DS/DS2, which can use the FTZ flashes in TTL mode (the original through-the-lens metering mode of flash light).