List Price: $255.00
Sale Price: $225.00
Today's Bonus: 12% Off
First things first, I am a professional photographer (ALL of my income comes from my photography). I rely on my tools to function when I call on them to. I bought this as a supplement to my 430 EXII's, and intended on using this as an on-camera master to trigger the 430's as remote slaves. For this, the flash has worked perfectly. If you know how these systems function (i.e. This is line-of-sight, not a radio-trigger), and set up your lighting accordingly, the flash functions flawlessly. I've used this on 2 shoots in the first 3 days of having it and it's made my life easier and my lighting set-ups more versatile. I'm looking to get a speed ring to test this mounted onto a light stand and shoot with a soft box or beauty dish, just to compare it to set-ups more similar to Alien Bees. This has a portability advantage vs. AB's though, seeing as it's lightweight, easy to store and more importantly, battery powered.
As to the battery aspect, this recharges far quicker than I expected it to. In fact, i swapped out the expensive Lithium Extreme batteries (that I bought for $2 a battery) and started using cheap Costco AA's on the second day because this recharged so quickly. I'm not an electrical engineer, but I didn't notice much difference in performance between the two and I was shooting for an hour and a half at 1/4-1/2 power the entire time.
In conclusion, if I had to make a complaint, it would be that the + and buttons feel reversed to me (the '+' is on the left, '-' on the right; it's counter-intuitive) and the zoom button is a progressive step (24-28-35-50-70-85-105) and not a single 'push and select' that then takes + & inputs. So my two complaints are based on the fact that the Canon menu system is superior, but the flash head itself has taken every task I've asked it to and run with it.
I'm considering selling my 430's and picking up a few more of these, simply because of the power, portability, versatility and price of these units. If you're looking for a less-expensive (I won't say "cheap", it's still $250) alternative to the like-branded flashes, I'd highly recommend this unit in a heartbeat.
0 comments:
Post a Comment