Staff note: This post may contain affiliate links, which means Pentax Forums may earn a small commission if a visitor clicks through and makes a purchase. If you would like to support the forum directly, you may also make a donation here.
Hi all;
I've got an AF200FG flash I'd like to use to introduce some light into my macro work. I know it's kinda lacking in the feature set department, but it's what I've got to work with for now, apart from my K-S2's pop-up unit. It's going to be a while (if ever ) that I would be able to afford any of the higher end Pentax flashes. Radio triggered stuff is not likely to be in my future either.
I do have an older Vivitar Series 1 880AF (which I believe is a rebadged Sigma EF-500 DG Super) which is Canon dedicated. It has tilt, swivel, optical slave capability, and offers manual power settings down to 1/128. Currently, it does not fire on a hot shoe, though it does work as a slave. I'm guessing that there's a broken connection for the central pin. I know I could set this flash up to be run as a slave from my K-S2's on board flash, but I'd rather not use the built-in flash at all, so as to save battery power. I'm hoping to get it fixed in the near future, using it as a strictly manual unit. I also have an AF 280 T that I use as an auto bounce flash, using the built in sensor for flash exposure control in my non-macro indoor shooting. I'm guessing that the sensor might not work well for macro exposure control. It also is limited with regards to power settings. Having the automatic flash exposure that P-TTL offers will, I hope, be my way of getting around the lack of fine control on the 200 for macro. I haven't actually tried it out yet, but I will in the near future.
I've got an after market P-TTL compatible off camera cord combined with a swivel, so I'll be able to mount it on a bracket and move it around a bit to get light into areas where my built-in flash would shadowed by the lenses and tubes I'd be using. It's the compatibility of the lenses and tubes with P-TTL that I'm wondering about. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding from reading the relevant bits of the
Nigel McGregor's Comprehensive Flash Guide that P-TTL is only going to be available with KAF lenses (in my case my 18-50 WR RE kit lens, DA 55-300, DA 35 f2.4, SMC-F 50 f1.7, SMC-F 70-210 and a few other old Pentax film AF kit zooms). Not all of these lenses are going to be useful for macro, but with tubes, some might, particularly the F 50mm. My question is this: if I have extension tubes or de-glassed teleconverters that have the A contacts, can I use the KAF lenses on them and still have P-TTL?
Thanks,
Bruce