Testing out the Vivitar 285HV flash on the Pentax k10D, this photo had some ambient light and the Vivitar was bounced from the ceiling. I boosted the brightness contrast a little but nothing too dramatic. To speak the truth, I don't really know what I'm doing with the Vivitar but it's pretty easy to get some decent shots out of it. The colour codes; yellow, red, blue and purple start from lowest to highest power and I take a few test shots with the desired aperture and adjust from there. When using an open shutter, I use either yellow or red and for apertures 4 to 8 I use either blue or purple, pretty simple. I guess in time I'll learn how to use the exposure dial more effectively or be able to judge the scene I'm shooting anf control the light from there.

I also recieved the Cactus V2s remote trigger / receiver today and tested a few shots with the Vivitar 285HV and Pentax K10D on Mr.Pinhead. Out of about 30 test shots, the flash fired 100% of the time, although the flash was no more than 40cm from the camera. The reason I say this is that I've read that the Cactus V2s can be somewhat unpredictable and shoot approx 8 out of 10 times as they are a little on the cheap side, depending on the distance.

Here's one shot where I used a lamp to cast the elongated shadow and the off camera flash which was bounced off the ceiling as a fill light. The lamp casts terrible yellow light which I kind of fixed in post but still, the colours are pretty shitty.