Flashes

Me and Mogens were looking at wide-angle lenses, which of course brings me on to the subject of flashes. What I’ve really wanted to play with is several flashes, for instance a Canon 580ex and two Canon 420ex’es as slaves. But since Canon hasn’t decided to sponsor my blog with these lenses just yet, I started reading up on alternatives.

My first suprise was, the wireless support for these lenses is infra-red. Hello, radio has been around for a loooong time! Do you think I’ll have those extra flashes put in a place where they can have “eye-contact”? So, looks like I’ll be waiting for a new series of flashes.

But, I found it interesting that the Sigma EF-500 DG works just like the 580ex, people have been really pleased about it and it’s just half the price of the Canon. Alas, the Sigma seems to get a thumbs down from one wedding photographer (Ben Rubenstein). (the other reviews were good, but way shorter) The EF-500 was Sigma’s answer to Canon’s 550ex, guess we’ll see what they’ll match the 580ex with. While we’re waiting, read the EF-500 review and the 580ex review.

New to flash photography with Canon camera’s? Read this introduction. It’s a bit long, but it has all that you want

Well, to summarize the lens issue: I might be selling my EF-S 18-55mm and only use my EF 28-80mm and use 0.42x fisheye lens I was conned into buying. Or, I’ll continue, as now, to use my 18-55mm for fisheye only. The options we read up on were EF-S 10-22mm (samples)/(forum reviews) that would suit me very well (that is, if I started doing landscape photography and such. Right now, my use for this lens would probably be quite limited), but the EF 17-40mm has got really good critiques in different forums as well, even though the 10-22mm forum sais to stay away from the 17-40mm if the 10-22mm is an option. My main critique of the 10-22mm is that 10mm looks very fish-eye’ish. For fisheye, I think the Peleng 9mm featured on Chromasia seems spectacular. But for now I’ll keep toying with my EF-S 18-55mm and the 0.42x fisheye.