[tfischer]

Merry Christmas all

I'm the proud owner of a new K3 II that my wife gave me as a Christmas present as an upgrade from my K20D. I also have a Rokinon D980AFZ-PK flash (which is sometimes also branded as Vivitar) that I've used successfully for years with the K20D. However, when I try taking a picture with it with the K3 II, the flash starts strobing like a haunted house lol - we're talking a very fast strobe which seems to continue until I shut off the flash. Incidentally I put the flash in Manual mode (non- P-TTL) and the same issue happened.

Any idea what's going on here? Are some P-TTL flashes incompatible with the K3II? This is obviously important since the camera itself doesn't have a pop-up flash.

Thanks much!
-Tim

P.S. As an aside, I had my K-20D with me as we were opening gifts, and switched to the K3 II after I opened it, and was blown away by the difference in image quality, at least with the low light situation we were in. I can't wait to take it around to some other shooting situations as I always thought the K20D was pretty darned good.

[UncleVanya]

I don't know if this is related, but I recall reading that the older Tumax brand flashes had problems recognizing newer Pentax bodies. This seemed to be due to the fact that aftermarket flashes have to reverse engineer P-TTL.

Some like metz offer upgrades to firmware, most simply ignore the problem and you're forced to buy a newer flash.

[tfischer]

Yeah I was afraid of that. Is Rokinon a Tumax brand? Looking at their page, it looks very similar.

[UncleVanya]

Yeah I was afraid of that. Is Rokinon a Tumax brand? Looking at their page, it looks very similar.

I'm afraid I don't know. The good news is that the flash has manual mode and a simple wireless trigger should decouple it from your camera enough to salvage that use.