Great kids portrait, Christine! As Paul mentioned, no AC adapter for the Pentax flashes.
I think the TR battery pack is very much overpriced, and you'd be much better off with monolights. The Elinchrom D-Lites are well-priced in kits. You are in the USA, are you not? Then the Paul C Buff series are available to you and are really good value. If you need portable from time to time the Vagabond will power them (or D-Lites) in the field. The monolights also give you a modeling light and audible indication of recycling ready. What I do to get useful recycle times with flashes is set the flash at 1/2 or 1/4 power and up the ISO a stop or two to compensate. ISO 200 or 400 should work fine. With fresh batteries, at 1/2 power the AF540 recycles at just around a second; at 1/4 power it's almost instantaneous. By the way, using two or more flashes in tandem will get you back your light power. Used at 1/4 power you get speed too. If you are getting recycle times slower than that then you may have one or more weak cells in your set. Some battery chargers test for weak cells. I use a little jig with a flashlight lamp to apply a load and then I measure the voltage drop at the battery. A good cell will only droop a little, while a weak cell will drop as much as a volt. But I'm getting really tired of the whole song and dance around flashes and batteries so I'm gifting myself some Paul Buff monolights this Christmas. On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 5:59 PM, Christine Nielsen <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello & Happy Holidaze to one & all.... > > I'm sorry it's been a while since I've been around... life has gotten > busy and photographic inspiration has been scarce, it seems. So it > goes. Hope all is well with you? > > I think I already know the answer to my question (no), but here goes: > does anyone know is there an AC adapter set-up available for the > pentax 540 (or 360) flash? My vivitar has one... the pentax flashes > don't appear equipped for this. Maybe there's a work-around? > > I had a crew at my place yesterday for a quick Christmas card > shoot... I often just go with natural light in there, but it was a > rainy, overcast morning... and this bunch isn't much for sitting > still... So, more light was in order, and it would have been great to > have faster recycle times... > > Though, I wonder what the terminal velocity is for recycle times...? > Would having AC power be any faster than running flashes at 1/64 or > 1/32...? > > And, just to give you an idea of what I was up against, a peso... ;) > http://www.christinenielsen.com/sharing/h1763AF#h1763af > > Thanks for your thoughts, > -c > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- -bmw -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
