Nice work Tomtor. You know, my kids quit being willing guinea pigs a long time ago- in fact now, whenever I get the camera out they scurry like cockroaches from the light!
The stuffed animal looks like a great solution.
I too own the both a Metz 58 and Pentax 540. Personally I think the Metz build quality is better, and the four push-buttons on the back make for pretty quick and simple operation compared to the 540. I am unfortunately temporarily disabled from recent rotator cuff surgery, so doing a lot of this kind of testing would be tough right now.
I was initially going to get rid of my 540 in favor of another Metz, but it seems it might be worthwhile keeping one of each. Perhaps a follow-up to your testing could confirm this? My impression is that when using both, the Metz is the best one on-camera, but the 540 is the better of the two off-camera. But the $64-million dollar question is concerning High-Speed Sync with a slave flash. When scrolling through the Metz functions, it seems that you can choose "Remote", to use it as a slave, or "HSS", but NOT both. (Another poster from another thread also had the same info.) The 540 should be able to do both, according to the manual- IF you have a second 540 as controller, mounted on-camera. Soooo, the Metz -should- be able to operate as controller for the same purpose. Can you confim this? And whether or not the Metz -can- operate as slave in HSS mode?
I did plan to get around to doing that testing myself; sorry if I sound lazy in asking you. But your post is quite timely and I'm sure there are other readers who would benefit from the info. It appears the only "downfall" to using the two different brands together would be the possible confusion caused by their quite different controls. Thanks for the post.
Paul