Zooming two flashes

Planfoto

On Camera (on the tranceiver) Pentax AF360FGZ. On the receiver: AF540FGZ. Non of them do zoom, when zooming the lens. I must do this manually. And then ONLY the receiver flash is changing focal length setting??
The on camera flash stays at 24mm?
What can I do?

Planfoto

Is it necessary to use 3 V6ii units (one TX and two RX) if I want full control (zoom angle and power) of both the ON/NEAR THE CAMERA" fill flash as well as my key light on a receiver. I want to work in TTL mode with both flashes. I use Pentax K1- and AF360FGZ and AF540FGZ flashes.

Class A

If you want TTL on both flashes, you need firmware PEN.A.001 on both V6II units.

You don't need more than two V6II units.

My assumption is that your intended set up is not working due to a bug in PEN.A.001 which prevents the on-camera flash (the one sitting on your on-camera V6II) from working correctly. I understand Cactus are already looking into the problem.

You should be able to fire both flashes as intended using the multi-brand firmware variant (e.g., V1.1.013), but this won't give you P-TTL for the off-camera flash.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I think it would be helpful to do the troubleshooting either at pentaxforums.com or here, but not in both places.

Antonio

To manually adjust the zoom of an on-camera flash, here's what you do:

1. Mount V6 II (TX) on camera
2. Mount Pentax flash on V6 II (TX)
3. Switch on camera
4. Switch on flash
5. Set flash mode to P-TTL
6. Switch on V6 II to TX mode
7. Look on display of V6 II at bottom left corner, do you see "TTL", if yes, you have set on-camera flash to TTL mode (aka the old TTL Pass Through) so you need to Hold down the Menu button for 2 seconds to switch from TTL mode to Manual control. You will see the channel number displayed instead of "TTL".
8. Then push in on the Selection Dial once, this switches from power control (either TTL+/- or Relative Power Levels) to Zoom, e.g. 35MM.
9. Next, to control the on-camera flash, hold down the Menu button and scroll the Selection Dial at the same time.

Note that when your on-camera flash is set to TTL mode, you won't be able to manually adjust the zoom range. 

On the other hand, for your off-camera flashes in Group A, B, C and D, even if the groups are in TTL mode, you will be able to manually adjust the zoom level. The reason is for off-camera flash, flash is not necessary placed aligned with camera lens so the zoom information is not transferred to the off-camera flash units. 

For more information please refer to the Quick Start Guide for Pentax X-TTL:

https://www.cactus-image.com/Cactus V6 II Quick Start Guide (Pentax%20X-TTL).pdf

And the User Manual, despite it is mainly for Multi-brand HSS firmware operations but the core controls are the same.  Turn to pages 22, 41, 45 and 52.

https://www.cactus-image.com/Cactus V6 II User Manual (EN).pdf 

Planfoto said:

Is it necessary to use 3 V6ii units (one TX and two RX) if I want full control (zoom angle and power) of both the ON/NEAR THE CAMERA" fill flash as well as my key light on a receiver. I want to work in TTL mode with both flashes. I use Pentax K1- and AF360FGZ and AF540FGZ flashes.

The usual case is one (1) Cactus V6 II for each device (camera / flash), unless you are using one flash on-camera, then you two (2) would do.

Hope this helps!

Thank you.

Planfoto

I don't understand when or if the on camera flash can or will zoom automatically. SOmetimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I feel I need to have it zooming, in order to being able to adjust the off camera flash to the same focal length. What can I do? Regards Jens

Planfoto

Sorry - I found OUT: Make sure the TTL pass through is ON at the TX :-)

Antonio

That's right, you have to turn on TTL mode by holding down the V6 II Menu button for 2 seconds in order to get automatic TTL exposure including automatic zoom range.

Cheers!