[Deni]

Funny thing, when I use the flash with my 55mm Tak in manual it seems to overexpose some and I shoot everything at f16 or f11 even at lower ISO so the flash has enough power, its just the way the PTTL works.

Actually with your takumar the onboard flash will fire at full power as it cannot read the aperture of your takumar to calculate the ammount of light needed to properly expose the capture. For your takumar you need an auto-thyristor flash.

[germar]

Hi, I'm afraid I must add my voice to the "dark photos on Green or P mode" bandwagon. I have never liked what the camera does with PTTL images, they often seem about 1-1.5 stops dark according to my histogram. This is with pop up, a Pentax 360, and now a Metz 58. Put both of the off camera flashes on Automatic (not PTTL..the flashheads auto), and the pics look wonderful.

I recall a thread a while back that put forward the idea that Pentax intentionally tweaked the K10D to the dark side to avoid blown highlights.... you can tweak up your darks, but blown highlights are forever! So, said the thread, Pentax would grab this hotspot and adjust exposure so this highlight would drop it into the center right of the histogram, and let everything else fall where it may. Not saying I buy that, but there it is for consideration.

Either way, I too say that it's not something wrong with your camera, thats the way the all shoot... Leave the pop up flash for contrast control and get yourself another flash for your real strobe needs.

germar

[gkopeliadis]

Finaly I'm back from vacation
Thanks everybody for your replies. They were very informative and made me decide to buy an external flash!
Meanwhile I tracked down my original problem and the randomness of my camera's behavior. It was my polaroid filter left on the lens. It seems that the flash / reflected light is highly polarised and when in the proper angle, little light passed through the lens

[Buddha Jones]

Just curious, what lenses are you guys using?