Originally posted by Squier Some great help here guys, thank you
The one thing that worries me, is buying a flash unit that is not dedicated pentax fit. There's a massive amount of flash units available for a lot cheaper than the AF280T i saw, but many of the sellers have not listed which camera they fit.
Should i only buy dedicated flashes that state they fit Pentax KA hot shoe mount ? Like the Rokinon newarts posted
Your K200D won't do TTL flash control, only P-TTL. If you don't get a TTL or P-TTL flash, then the "dedication" of the flash doesn't mean very much. The very earliest "dedicated" flashes did little more than tell the camera that a flash was mounted and ready to fire. Sometimes, the camera would refuse to trip the shutter until the flash was fully charged. On some, the "dedication" was as little as displaying a light in the viewfinder when the flash was charged.
My point is that, if you're going to use a manual or "auto" flash (with the sensor in the flash, rather than the camera), then the dedication isn't important.
Just make sure that the flash is not too completely dedicated to another brand of camera. Some Sony and Canon cameras use a different hotshoe configuration. Flashes made for those cameras may not fire, even in manual mode, on a Pentax camera. OTOH, Nikon SB25 flashes are known to work well on Pentax cameras.
Back in the film days, before TTL flash control, there were a lot of flash makers out there who made un-dedicated flashes that worked well with any camera that had a standard hotshoe. In its simplest form, all a flash needs the camera to do is short the center contact to the side contact on the hotshoe. This is what triggers the flash. All those other pins on the hotshoe are for flash control.
I use a Promaster 5500 flash. This unit uses interchangeable control units that change the dedication to various cameras. I use one with the thyristor light sensor builtin, meaning that it works in auto-flash mode. I could get a controller for Pentax TTL, Nikon TTL or others. It does not do any of the preflash TTL technologies. They have a different model for that.
BTW, as far as I know, all Vivitar 295HV's are safe to use on a modern dslr. Don't confuse the 285HV with the 285 (non-HV version) which can have a very high trigger voltage. I think that all Vivitar 283's are unsafe. Any flash can be used safely if you use a Wein Safe-Sync, which drops the trigger voltage to a safe level and adds a PC socket, to boot.