Originally posted by Photomy Since I am an active bouncer, would you recommend traditional auto-flash instead to increase chance of consistent results? Still no guarantee of course - but at least I know how the auto-flash will work and when to watch out.
Thanks, RH
- Tomy
That actually quite depends on the shooting situation and whether you use bounced flash or not.
Just say with direct flash and a very dark and/or far away background with a brighter object, P-TTL is quite accurate sometimes as it is not fooled by the scene and it uses mainly the object distance to calculate the flash output.
However, traditional TTL flash sensing method, which neither the K10D nor the K100D supports, do have the advantage to give consistent results with objects fill up the scene evenly and with an overall average reflectance close to the mid-tone.
External Auto Mode is also reliable but it may not be as ideal as TTL owing to the different coverage between the sensor and the actual framing. However, since the reflectance of CCD is not consistent with different incident angle plus the AA filter is quite reflective (unlike film surface), it would actually be a good idea to avoid the TTL method. My experience is that the *ist D is more accurate Pentax DSLR for TTL auto flash whereas the DS tends to overexpose.
You can actually use external auto flash with the 360/540 flash, provided that you switch to M mode for the camera, then you can experience with the result.
If you use 3rd party auto flash units, which cannot tell the camera for the aperture chosen, you will have the handy freedom to make flash compensation just by stop-down or open-up the aperture while the setting at the flash gun remains unchanged. But do note you loose the freedom to chose any aperture anyway.
Do get a quality external flash. The Vivitar flash unit I use (not mine, but my friends often borrowed it to me when I needed it) is of poor quality and reliable. Actually it is not quite accurate, when I use the f/4 auto at ISO 200 (the red setting), it overexposes, so I simply select f/5.6 at my K100D. Similarly but on the other hand, when I use f/8 auto at ISO 200 (the blue setting), it underexposes, so I simply select f/5.6 to compensate. So, the funny thing is that I can only use f/5.6 with this auto flash now! Funny! Anyway, the results are acceptabe in accuracy and consistency.
I don't like the Vivitar flash anyway as the lighting is not even plus the color tones/temp are rather odd. Pentax's flash units are undoubtedly better in terms of image quality..
Hope this helps.