Just getting into Photography and enjoying it with my Canon 450D. I do a lot of indoor shots of family, parties, and other such events, although I frequently have had to resort to using the stock camera flash, which I hate. I want to get a good flash that will work with my camera but need to do it on a reasonable budget. I would like to stay around 75 - 150. Can anyone recommend some options?

Thanks,
Adam

Used Canon 420EX should be between $100 and $125. Otherwise get a 430EX. Avoid anything cheaper or you are wasting your money.

Vivitar 285HV

Start with a 430EX...you'll probably get a 580II soon after!

Multiple flash/off cam stuff gets fun.

Make sure whatever you get has a bounce head and learn how to use it with ceilings and walls. I still remember the first night I used bounce and it changed everything.

I have a 580EXII and an older 420 model. When I want to shoot the types of things you described (indoor family snapshots, i.e. relatives opening presents on Christmas), I will often mount the 420 and throw the camera on AV or P mode. It's mindless, and seems to do a better job of being the automatic flash that I want in those (and only those) instances. It's great for basic fill light outdoors too! If you're new at this, especially the flash part, the 580 will be way too complicated to use effectively.

I managed to pick up a like new ex430II. Still have not really used it. But recharge time is amazingly quick. Seems to work very well. Far better then the onboard one. Just need a wireless transmitter. And one more of these.

580EXII is the way to go. A 430EXII costs more because you'll eventually sell it (lose money on it) and buy a 580EXII anyway.

Matt Philbin wrote:
If you're new at this, especially the flash part, the 580 will be way too complicated to use effectively.


No its not, you can use in the way you described also (P mode).
I bought a 580ex as my first flash with my 350D and after a while bought a cheap used 550ex as a slave . both great flashes . If you want bargain look for a 550EX used

Sigma EF-530 DG ST for $150. Very powerful and good. I've had a Sigma 500 Super for years now and have never wanted to upgrade to the very expensive 580EXII. The 430EXII is a nice little unit too though... if you like. A non-dedicated Sunpak 383 is great for under $100, but you don't get focus assist which can be useful.

Dawei Ye wrote:
580EXII is the way to go. A 430EXII costs more because you'll eventually sell it (lose money on it) and buy a 580EXII anyway.

Yeah, I found the 430EX too big and bulky to carry so I bought a smaller pocket sized 220EX. Use lithium AAs and it's amazingly light. It's my favorite flash for travel, biking and hiking.

Have you seen this current thread? http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/832474

Ian.Dobinson wrote:
Matt Philbin wrote:
If you're new at this, especially the flash part, the 580 will be way too complicated to use effectively.


No its not, you can use in the way you described also (P mode).


Sure, you can, but if that's your only purpose for this flash, than wouldn't you agree it's overkill? Kinda like buying the best new PC only to play solitare?

A new flash user doesn't immediately need the master capability, adjustable light output, or most of the other higher end features it offers. The older and smaller Canon flashes recharge quickly enough for casual users.

As for it's complexity, you can't deny this. It's the reason there are so many aftermarket tutorials on how to use the flash (like Chuck's). Not being a professional or constant flash user, it took me over a year to make friends with my 580.

Matt Philbin wrote:
Ian.Dobinson wrote:
Matt Philbin wrote:
If you're new at this, especially the flash part, the 580 will be way too complicated to use effectively.


No its not, you can use in the way you described also (P mode).


Sure, you can, but if that's your only purpose for this flash, than wouldn't you agree it's overkill? Kinda like buying the best new PC only to play solitare?

A new flash user doesn't immediately need the master capability, adjustable light output, or most of the other higher end features it offers. The older and smaller Canon flashes recharge quickly enough for casual users.

Possibly
But pretty quickly you could have the situation where you might be wanting more and then realise that the lesser flash isn't going to cut it. You can always have less power but you cant make a less powerful flash more powerful.
Best bang for the buck is either a used 430EX as you have much more control or a 550 EX which is not far behind the 580EX. Both would be cheap enough and be very usable upto the point where you get another flash to use as a master or slave

As for it's complexity, you can't deny this. It's the reason there are so many aftermarket tutorials on how to use the flash (like Chuck's). Not being a professional or constant flash user, it took me over a year to make friends with my 580.

agreed

Within your budget there aren't many options. Inexpensive manual flashes are a logical choice based on price, but only real advantage of the cheap manual flash approach is that its cheap. Over the long haul -- flashes last a long time if not dropped -- you will be better off with a Canon flash which will take advantage of your camera's metering and can also be used manually if the situation makes it more advantageous.

The dilemma of adding any external flash to the hot shoe is that will provide more light and range but will do nothing to improve the quality of the lighting, especially in portrait mode because flattering lighting is a function of several factors, but the most important is DIRECTION. We react to contrast patterns created by sources which come from overhead, so logically to get "natural" looking modeling with a flash it needs to come from the same direction: over the head of the subject. There are two basic strategies for getting light to come from above with flash:

One is bouncing it off the ceiling, but its only effective when there is a low white ceiling and at its best is not very controllable or predictable. Most single flash diffusers work by bouncing most of the light off the ceiling with some projected straight ahead to avoid dark eye sockets (caused by the brow shading the light off the ceiling). Bounce and "bowl / cap" diffusers produces bland uniform lighting like and overcast day which makes foreground and background distractions blend together.

The second is to raise the flash about 12-18" above the lens on a bracket. That height puts the flash far enough above the head of a subject at typical portrait distances of 8' to create a flattering, downward, highlight / shadow pattern. All of these are single flash shots done with the flash mounted on a bracket with a diffusers which projects all the flash output forward:

cgardner wrote:
Inexpensive manual flashes are a logical choice based on price, but only real advantage of the cheap manual flash approach is that its cheap.

Manual only I would agree, however with the vivitar's their autothyristor "auto" modes are frequently more consistent than E-ttl. (E-ttl has done more to make me consider a switch to NIkon than the mkIII/D3 debate)

Canon in their tutorial on the automatic exposure mode for the 580exII (which is similar to autothyristor) even notes "some users may find that it provides less fussy and more consistent flash exposures for ordinary on-camera flash with indoor scenes where you aren’t trying to balance flash and ambient light."

I own both versions of the 580, as well as vivitar 285HV's/283s

If the budget is firm - the 285HV is the best bang for the buck. It will require more thinking than simply sliding a 420ex on the hotshoe, but it is powerful, versatile and consistent. When one progresses to the point that they feel limited by it's function and lack of certain features (such as swivel), it becomes an excellent remote unit.

Dawei Ye wrote:
580EXII is the way to go. A 430EXII costs more because you'll eventually sell it (lose money on it) and buy a 580EXII anyway.

That is hardly within his budget. A used 420/430EX is fine for most basic applications, and can be found within his price range.

Mark,

I bought my first Vivitar flashes in 1973 and know the pros and cons of auto-thyristor. It was great in the days of film with its two-stop latitude for over-exposure and where the field of view of the sensor on the flash matched the FOV the most commonly used lens: 50mm. But in the age of digital with its razor thin margins for correct highlight exposure and the use of zoom lenses its just not as good a tool for the job today as a flash controlled with TTL - through the lens metering.- in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. Its pretty simple really: point, shoot, look at the overexposure warning and adjust EC and FEC as needed to control the background and foreground, respectively.

The most foolproof method for correct exposure with flash is power and distance. That's how I learned flash photography, starting from the get-go with two single power manual flashes. For example, with one flash on camera as fill and the other off camera, shooting from a distance to 8ft, putting the off camera flash at 6ft. results in the off camera incident strength being 1 stop greater. 2x Key overlapping 1x fill creates a 3:1 ratio which is ideal for general photography (it looks "normal" as seen by eye). Correct exposure is simply a matter of doing a one-time bracket test to find out what f/stop is needed.

From that point on perfect exposure is simply a matter of using that same f/stop any time in the future when shooting from 8ft, and creating similar benchmarks for other shooting distances. Back in the early 70's we'd shoot an entire wedding that way, adjusting the aperture over a range of 3-stops as distance changed. With practice it becomes so automatic you being to see and think of distance to the subject in terms of f/stops, not feet.

I still use that same method I learned working for Monte Zucker when shooting location portraits. The off camera flash goes an arm-span away between nose and center of the diffuser, I adjust the pose, take four measured steps back to 8ft raise the camera and shoot. The exposure with both 580ex flashes at 1/2 power is f/8 at ISO 100 every single time; no need for metering. Exposure is perfect regardless of clothing color and skin tone because there is no metering based on reflected light controlling the flash or camera: no variables. I can arrive, set up, and be shooting in about 2 minutes.

While that is without question the most consistent way to use flash I don't think it is the easiest way for a beginner with a modern DSLR to learn how to use flash to its best advantage. You'll also note I mentioned looking beyond current needs and budget. My Vivitars are now bookends, not because they don't work, but because the Canon flashes work better and are much easier to use

Chuck

cgardner wrote:
The most foolproof method for correct exposure with flash is power and distance.


Yeah, especially with Canon's ETTL... it just doesn't cut the mustard IMO. Nikon's seem to be much better implemented but that's another thread. I mostly use my 580ex II set to manual and use guide numbers as my baseline.

When using it in ETTL I have found it under exposes by a stop or more. Usually FEC of +1 corrects this, but then I'll occasionally get a shot that's blown... so I don't really trust ETTL + FEC.


In response to the original question, I think a gently used 430ex would serve you well.

Its a mistake think FEC=0= "correct" exposure. FEC=0 and EC=0 are simply the camera's best guess based on how you the photographer compose the shot in the viewfinder.

The #1 cause of poor results is not understanding the difference between composing for flash vs natural light. Flash falls off 2-stops each time the distance doubles and is only technically correct in the sense of exposing the highlights at one distance. Combine those physical realities of flash with the fact digital images need to be exposed for the highlights and that TTL exposure systems react to reflected light and you'll come to the conclusion that flash photos need to be composed so what we want correctly exposed is closest to the flash, and it fills as much of the viewfinder as possible so the metering will react to the foreground, not a huge void surrounding it reflecting very little light.

Average metering aims for the middle. Photograph a light or dark wall with flash and both will come out close to the same tone middle gray in the photos. The meter will cut back the flash to make the more reflective than average light wall average, and pump out more light to make the darker on average. Fill the viewfinder or meter with a bride's white dress and the meter will output only enough light to make it gray. But if the bride is 15ft away and only filling a small part of the frame the meter, reacting to the reflected pre-flash, sees very little light coming back and outputs a great amount of flash trying to make what it sees gray. By a happy coincidence that "over" exposure by several stops is what is needed to make the white dress white instead of gray.

Evaluative metering is a bit smarter. It compares 35 or 63 "spot" ambient and flash readings taken after the shutter is fully pressed. If direct flash is used with a USM lens it also knows how far away to point of focus information. With the information it can make an educated guess how far away the point of correct exposure needs to be.

Of course if the photographer includes a table with a white tablecloth closer the the camera it will react to it and underexpose the people further back behind the table. If a person is standing near a white wall the the camera will meter differently than if the wall is black. If the light is bounced off the ceiling or a FongOmatic is used it can't use the distance info from the lens and there is very little contrast to provide a clue what is closest because the whole room it lit up evenly like an overcast day. Those are the types of situations where the camera just can't make a very good guess what the photographer wants correctly exposed. So when in doubt evaluative errs on the side of not blowing any highlights.

Thus the simple way to control exposure is to use the over exposure warning to guide FEC settings, keeping the areas where you the photographer want correctly exposed highlights below clipping. Start shooting that way and you will become more aware of when composing scenes with less important stuff in the foreground is the cause of underexposure further back. FEL? It will help correctly expose the stuff further back in the scene, but not prevent the things in the foreground from getting blown out. Flash, regardless of the metering mode, only correctly exposes at one distance.

The #2 mistake people make with ETTL is outshooting the range of the flash. Its very easy to do when bouncing or using modifiers. The Achilles Heel of TTL is the lack of feedback how much of the flash capacity is being used. If you take a shot at FEC=0 and the flash used more than 50% of its capacity, dialing in FEC = +1 will take it to 100% and +2 or +3 will have no effect. What I do when shooting in ETTL mode is also have M mode set for 1/1 - full power. Then if the ETTL results seem wonky I'll hit the mode button and fire off a full power shot for comparison, which tells me if I'm within the range.

The #3 mistake people make with ETTL is outshooting the recycling of the flash. Canon has what it calls a "quick flash" mode. It will allow the camera to fire the flash as soon as its at 1/6 to 1/2 capacity. If the flash is close and only using say 25% of total capacity for correct exposure, then 3-4 shots can be taken rapidly with the same exposure, but then the point is reached where the flash can't keep up and the shots become progressively underexposed.

The #4 mistake people make with ETTL flash is shooting at very high ISOs. If the ISO is high enough to expose the background with ambient light, the metering for the flash seeing the same light will say, "Look fine here, let's take a break" and not output much flash.

The #5 mistake people make outdoors is overlapping flash on top of sun lit highlights or blowing the ambient highlights with shutter speed. Flash can't "fill" and reduce contrast it it hits a sunny cheek and a dark eye socket at the same time. The skin is the same reflectance in both areas and both will be lifted the same amount. To use flash effectively with ambient light its necessary to shoot into the shadow side of the ambient light. Click the WWW button below and read my tutorials on high speed flash and using flash outdoors for details.

Chuck

Chuck, thanks again for the insightful post. I feel like I "know" most of what you touched on above, but maybe not. I'll go over it again to see if something sinks in that I'm missing. I haven't visited your blog yet... will do that when I have a little more time.

As for point #4, I don't understand how ISO matters. It doesn't change the ratio between the background and subject; why would it matter what ISO is set at?

From your post I can't tell if you're a proponent or opponent of ETTL, maybe that's not the best way to put it. Myself, being someone who occasionally uses flash (mostly as fill), ETTL seems like a headache. For the most part I don't shoot with my camera in any AE mode so I can be in control the exposure, I feel the same about letting the flash make decisions, or as you more accurately stated, "best guess", for it's role in the exposure. I know some people rely on their ETTL setups and will spend lots of $$$ for wireless transmitters and receivers, but with the FEC and chimping involved it seems like I might as well use manual. I guess I'm lucky not to have encountered many situations where the light is rapidly changing.

I hope I'm not coming off like some sort of ETTL hater, don't want to sound that way at all

Dawei Ye wrote:
580EXII is the way to go. A 430EXII costs more because you'll eventually sell it (lose money on it) and buy a 580EXII anyway.
That is the most retarded statement I've heard in quite a while. He's new to photography and doesn't need/want/afford the top of the line equipment. I've used my old companies 420ex flash for 5 years and never had a complaint. It worked perfect for me. When I left that company I had to buy a flash for myself and I got a used 430ex for $195 and I'm perfectly happy with it. I have no need to upgrade to a more expensive model.

Reread cgarnder's post again above about bouncing. It makes a huge difference in the quality and professionalism of your photos by softening the shadows. I purchased the Flip-it with diffuser from here: http://www.dembflashproducts.com/

As you can see from my picture using the flip-it there are no hard shadows being cast onto the wall behind them:

back when the 550EX was current I tested it against the Sunpak 393, Vivitar 285HV (both in A mode) and the Sigma 500 Super. The Sunpak and Vivitar gave the most consistently well exposed exposures, *but* they tended to blow highlights, the 550EX and Sigma 500 gave identical exposures, except they tended to expose to protect the highlights no matter what, so even if the overall exposure was 2+ low, you had your highlights... with my 20D I could not recover more than 2 stops underexposure in raw witout having serious shadow noise issues. Bottom line, the Sunpak and Vivitar dumb flashes gave much better exposures with no adjustment. Yes, for perfect exposure you have to adjust either... but once you are making manual adjustments I don't think it matters how you are doing it, so ETTL offers little advantage. The biggest reason to choose a single ETTL unit is for focus assist and *maybe* high speed sync (I bought a flash that has it because I thought it was cool, but have used it maybe a handfull of times).

Jacob:

What I'm referring to is situation indoors in a dark room where the camera is already wide open and as slow as can be hand-held then higher ISOs are used to create more background ambience with the flash lit scenes foreground. At lower ISOs when the comparison of ambient and flash is done in the evaluative flash metering very less ambient light would be detected and more flash would be used. As the ISO rises so does the overall ambient exposure and less flash is needed. Why its an issue is because the reason to use flash indoors often isn't the lack of ambient light intensity but the fact it hits faces from a steep unflattering angle (i.e. dark eyes shaded by brow) or its a different color temp than the flash (nearly always the case indoors).

I use both ETTL and M modes as the situation dictates. ETTL when either I or the subjects are moving around, and M for things like portraits or still life where the flash/subject distance doesn't vary.

Functionally there is no difference between changing power manually or changing it via FEC adjustment in ETTL mode: IF THE SUBJECT IS STATIONARY. The difference manifests itself when shooting situations which aren't static. ETTL reacts automatically to changes in subject distance. Once FEC is set to get correctly exposed highlights if the subject moves around the exposure will stay consistent automatically. WIth manual mode you'd need to either change aperture or flash power as the subject distance changes, which just isn't as practical.

When using my Vivitar flash manually in dynamic situations I'd shoot very systematically from pre-determined distances of 16, 11, 8, 6 feet. Just like f/stop numbers those distance increments change flash power by one f/stop due to the inverse square law. Starting from a baseline of 11ft @ f/8, I'd stop down to f/11 if moving into 8ft, and f/16 if moving into 6ft for a shot. If moving back to 16ft for a wide shot, the lens would be opened to f/5.6. After doing that repeatedly your brain will start to automatically measure distance in f/stops, not feet. It works with dual flash also. As the shooting distance changes you move the off camera flash in or out to keep the ratio the same. Fill / Key distance combinations of 16/11, 11/8, 8/6, and 6/4 all produce a 3:1 highlight/shadow ratio on a face (2x brighter key + 1x fill : 1x fill = 3:1)

FWIW: The idea that flash is "fill" is incorrect in most situations outdoors. On a sunny day there are two sources of light: the direct rays of the sun, and light reflected from the sky in all directions as fill.

When a person is standing facing the direct sun with shaded eyes, or face half in sun and half in shadow adding flash lifts highlights and shadows equally. The flash "fills" the shadows in the sense they get lighter, but so do the highlights. the contrast range between shaded eyes and sun lit cheek doesn't change because both are skin of the same reflectance and both are getting hit with the same amount of light. In that scenario the sun on the face is the "key" light, the light from the sky is acting as fill for the areas not hit by the direct sun (like the eyes) and flash? Since its hitting both the highlights and shadows at the same time its neither key or fill, its acting as both which really doesn't help much in the technical sense of exposure or contrast reduction.

If we start with normally exposed skin in the sunlit cheeks then add flash the highlights become overexposed. If we lower the ambient with shutter (assuming we are below x-sync) the eyes we just lifted with the flash get darker again. On a perceptual level we will react to the "twinkle" of catchlights in the eyes the flash creates in that situation and will accept lighter looking highlights as "normal", but at some point the balance gets out of whack the the brain says "that looks fake and over-flashed". Because caucasian skin reflects more red, green and blue in that order, the red channel in skin clips first. The brightest skin highlights, when overexposed by just 1/3 stop will start to get a flat yellowish look.

Back in the days B&W fill flash wasn't needed in direct sun to put detail in shaded eyes because the "normal" dynamic range of the film was about 10 stops scene illumination and with reduced negative development or the use of less contrasty print papers scenes with ranges of 12 or 13 stops could be reproduced normally. Contrasty lighting became more of a problem when photography switched to color which only has a range of about 5 stops.

When flash was used photographers found a better strategy in sunlight: put a person's back to the sun and expose the background normally, then lift the shady side of the face to match the background INDEPENDENTLY with the flash because there is no overlap of flash and sunlit highlights.

In that scenario the shady side is filled by skylight which is very soft but -3 stops darker than the sunny side. A digital camera with a 6-8 stop range renders the shaded face quite dark before flash is added if the background is exposed normally. When flash is added to the front of the subject it creates a highlight pattern on top of the skylight fill. The areas on the face not highlighted by the flash remain "filled" by sky and unchanged in tone.

Creating highlights is what a "key" light does by definition. So in that scenario the sun changes its role to "accent / rim / hairlight", the flash becomes the frontal "key" light, and the fill for the shadows (which remain quite dark) still comes from the sky. The flash lit face will still look "fake" unless the it is raised above the head of the subject. That gets us back to the initial point I made about adding flash: the direction matters. If we want flash light to look "natural" the direct it comes from must mimic the direction of natural light sources.

In that backlight scenario outdoors if we want the shadows on the face any lighter, we need to add a secondary fill source to boost the light from the sky from the direction of the camera.

The "magic" of the photographic process is that when exposure is correct in the technical sense of having detail in both the darkest shadows and brightest solid objects at the same time, all the tones in between fall into place perfectly perceptually because the response is engineered to be linear. That's part of what makes the Master on bracket / slave on stand arrangement with hot shoe flash both a practical and technically sound solution to matching the contrast of any scene to the range the sensor can record with detail.

Chuck

Dang, some real flash buffs here! I'm all lit up!