I'm still pretty new at photography, and am thinking about learning how to use an external flash. Can somebody point me to a good online primer about Canon flash lingo? It's even hard to know what to want from a flash until you understand some of the terms, it seems (I was looking into the Metz flashes, pricewise around a 36 or 44 but I want to know what I'm getting out of spending more on a flash).
Syl Arena's book Speedliter's Handbook covers both Nikon and Canon. Very helpful. Neil Van Niewerk has one out on Off Camera Flash. I have not read it, but his book On Camera Flash was insightful and helfpul.
a second on the strobist site, no matter what brand you shoot with. there's a wealth of information there, and it's all free as air. (air is still free at the time of this writing.) additionally, there's a strobist group on flickr which is dedicated to exchanging technique information and discussing the strobist blog.
two things to mention about strobist.blogspot.com, though:
--david hobby (producer of strobist) comes at flash solutions from a manual-flash perspective.
--he shoots nikon, so when he does talk about automatic settings, it tends to be nikon-centric.
I really like Neil van Niekerk's site and books. Many sources of flash quickly go into off-camera flash/ umbrellas/ multiple flash setups and other more complicated things. While he also covers those more complicated subjects, I found Neil's site great for the beginner since as a wedding photographer, many of his techniques are the quick on camera flash techniques to get the shot with out setting up a complicated lighting setup.
Let me tell you, this technique helped me get some great shots of my twins who are constantly in motion.
Yup, Mr. van Niekerk's tutorial is the only thing an occasional user needs. Strobist is what the doctor ordered if you want to light up an elephant with 10 bulbs firing 0.1s apart without giving the elephant redeye.
