It does sound like a body problem! I wonder whether there is a
communication problem affecting the quench circuit: this occurs to me
because I did have some dodgy exposures with the AF330FTZ on one occasion
until I noticed that the unit was not mounted squarely in the hot-shoe, so
not all of the contacts were firm. Seating it properly made them go away,
but it's probable that this will only happen when there has been some wear
on the shoe.
HTH
John Coyle
Brisbane, Australia
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Oswald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2005 2:28 PM
Subject: Re: Back from vacation: Lessons learned
I keep the camera in the standard multi-segmented mode. I just
double-checked, and verified that it's still in that (correct) mode.
The camera does have a problem with its internal flash; it always fires at
full throttle. I keep meaning to send it in to Pentax for service, and
will definately do so before the warranty is up. But I needed it for the
trip first. But my AF330FTZ problem isn't as severe as the camera's
internal flash problem. The AF330FTZ overexposes shots. The camera's
internal flash completely burns out the shot from such strong
overexposure. I'm sure that's a different issue.
John Coyle wrote:
Dave, do you think the problem might be your metering mode? I would
expect the use of averaged metering to cause this type of problem, and
have been successful with the same sort of set-up (*ist-D and AF330FTZ)
using spot metering.
John Coyle
Praxis Data Solutions (www.epraxisdata.com)
Brisbane, Australia
----- Original Message ----- From: "David Oswald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2005 12:47 PM
Subject: Re: Back from vacation: Lessons learned
Kostas Kavoussanakis wrote:
Are these with pre-flash, Dave?
Well, here's the problem I'm having with the AF330FTZ.
If I shoot at night with the AF330FTZ, with no intervention via the
flash EV menu, any shot in flash range will be highly overexposed. This
is particularly a problem if the background is out of flash range; in
other words, the subject is close but the background is distant. But
regardless, there is an overexposure issue when shooting with the flash
at night.
If I shoot with the flash in twilight conditions (ie, dusk) the problem
remains, but isn't as significant.
If I shoot in daylight conditions using the flash as a fill flash, the
problem is pretty much gone, which is to be expected, I suppose. Though
sometimes I think the flash punches the foreground up just a little too
much even in daylight conditions.
I can back the flash off a bit using the flash EV menu in the *ist-DS.
Usually I need to back off at least -1ev, but sometimes even -2ev isn't
enough. Particularly at night, -2ev in the flash EV menu isn't enough
to balance things out. In this case, I have to switch the camera over
to manual mode and manipulate the flash's effectiveness via f-stop
settings for the lens.
What is a real challenge with the AF330FTZ is shooting a night shot of a
cityscape while using the flash to illuminate the subject in the
foreground. I attempted such a shot in Hong Kong (for those of you
familiar with Hong Kong, we were at the mountain peak via the cable-car
tram). There, I wanted to take a shot of my wife with the city lights
in the background and her properly exposed in the foreground. I've
taken this sort of shot with my ZX-5n and the AF330FTZ. But I just
absoutely couldn't get it right with the *ist-DS and AF330FTZ.
It shouldn't have been that difficult of a shot; use a tripod, meter for
the city lights in the background, and allow the flash's TTL to cut the
flash short when the foreground reached proper exposure. Heck, the
camera's "night shot" mode is pretty much MADE to do this. But even
without night-shot mode, I should be able to switch to Tv mode and set
the shutter speed relatively slow. The rest should be handled by the
camera and flash.
The fact is that I never got what I thought was a decent result until I
switched the flash to ML mode (low power manual mode) and the camera to
Manual mode so that I could take care of the shutter and aperture
myself. By then my wife was pretty much tired of the whole situation and
the shot was ruined by her boredom. ;)
The AF330FTZ doesn't have a prefire mode, only TTL (not P-TTL).
<SNIP>
