UKH

Hello all,

After a bit of advice about flash guns. I used studio flashes and speedlites when I was learning SLR photography about 20 years ago. Back then flashes just flashed at varying brightness and speed and had to be wired to your camera in some way.

Having spent the last 15 years or so not doing any flash work I've forgotten what I did know, and it seems tech has moved on.

Virtually all flashes are wireless now and don't necessarily need to be in the shoe to fire. Many are tilt and swivel which offers some obvious advantages, but some talk about zoom functions and more that I don't fully understand yet

So the question is what should I look for?

The plan is to use it to

a)learn more about flash photography in general,

b)provide better lighting and flexibility for Macro shooting

c)use to fill-in poorly lit portrait scenes etc

d)use it off camera to provide dramatic higlights/side lighting etc to more general scenes

From what I can see the "Makes" Cannon and Nikon offer options in the £150-500 range

whereas there seems to be all manner of flashes for sale in the £30-£100 range that seem to offer similar ranges of functions.... the problem is I can't see any decent reviews of these just a load of amzon peeps saying its great and arrived on time

I don't want to spend stupid money as I know this will never make up a majority of my photography, but I also don't want to buy something very limiting (and end up not using it or replacing later)

It's a huge subject area.

I was pointed here, start at Lighting-101.

Thanks for that... sometimes you just need to know what to google... looks like I'm in for some reading.

Hmm... although most results seem to want money for a "course"

Still interested to hear of anyone's views about significant features tho

Sorry, forgot the link, doh:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/

I bought a cheap flash once - a sigma branded one for my Canon. Seemed cheap at the time, provided the functionality I wanted.

Upgraded to a new Canon body , Sigma flash no worky. Sorry. Canon flash of same era still worky, as do past Canon flashes of previous era.

Won't make that mistake again - buy cheap buy twice or more. Particularly if what you are buying is a reverse engineered product of the brand leader that you expect to work in the future

Did you know that you can buy a flash transmitter and receiver for ~£20, that will convert any old flash into a remote one? Some also do multi channel ones so you can run more that one flash. If you have an old flash kicking about, you can play with one of those kits and get a feel for what you can do.

For macro, wont you need a ring flash? These seem to be very reasonably priced on that auction site.

+1 to stobist.blogspot

I have a couple of cheaper non-OEM flashes with a transmitter, which work great for me. If they become incompatible with future bodies then it is not a big deal to replace them and you can still sell the incompatible flash.

It is definitely worth get the transmitter, getting the camera off-flash opens up a lot of creative possibilities.