 Karma Wilson |
420 EX? I'm looking into a good but inexpensive flash to use mainly for fill flash purposes. My interests are wildflower/people/wildlife photography. Will this flash plus the Lightsphere II suffice? Thanks! Karma
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Christopher A. Vedros |
I think the 420EX would definitely fill your needs. Having said that, I think I should point out a few things that I have learned about the 420EX lately. The main differences between the 420EX and the 550EX/580EX are obvious: the 420 is less powerful and less expensive. For the purposes you state, power shouldn't be a big issue. One other big difference is that the 420EX does not have a manual mode like the 2 higher models. It only works in E-TTL mode. This is great most of the time. I found out the hard way that this means the 420EX can NOT be used to trigger a studio strobe system. The preflash that fires a split second before the exposure (too quickly for your eye to notice) will trigger the strobes early, and the exposure will end up being lit only by the main flash of the 420EX. If you ever decide to work with studio strobes, you'll need to trigger them with a PC cord or a wireless transmitter. This is not so bad since the 20D has a PC socket, I think. I'm not trying to talk you out of the 420EX - this is the flash I have, and I think it's the flash you're looking for. I just wanted to point out a limitation that I had learned. If you want to learn more about the EOS flash system than you ever thought you needed to know, read the article here: http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/ BIG thanks to Jon Close for posting that link - it has taught me a lot. PS - I haven't tried the Lightsphere. I have a Lumiquest Mini Softbox that I like.
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Karma Wilson |
Thanks for the detailed response. Much appreciated. I'm going to go ahead and purchase this flash. If I find need of a master unit later I'll buy the Sigma 500 Super I guess. Karma
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