Canon Flash Gear

• My Canon EOS 20D camera.
• My Canon 580EX II speedlight.
• My Canon ST-E2 remote flash controller.
• My Canon TTL off camera cord.

If you are a strobist reader, you may have noticed that it almost exclusively talks about Nikon gear. This puts off some Canon people, but pay attention and notice that not an awful lot is said about Nikon ETTL, so get your Canon camera and flash gear into manual and keep reading.

You may have been shocked (and rightly so) to learn that some (most?) Canon gear does not have standard PC sync connectors. This is indeed true of all but the very latest Canon gear, and is simply deplorable. However, the problem is easily remedied by getting hot shoe adapters (which are available for either the camera or the flash as needed). My 20D and 580EX II both have PC sync connectors, so I am "ready" so to speak, once I spring for radio controllers. (Older 580 units without the II may not have a PC sync connector; consider yourself warned).

The Canon 430EX at $250 is less expensive than the Canon 580EX II. at $420. The extra $170 gets you a flash with a guide number of 190 feet instead of 141 feet, and a flash that can be a master, not just a slave like the 430. And, the 580 has the wheel to change settings instead of buttons. The 580 has a connector for an external battery pack. Click on the links and read the reviews to find out about the myriad of other differences. (I still can't verify if the 430 has a PC sync connector or not, but I think not).

The Canon 420 is the low cost brother to the 430. It does not offer any fractional power output options as a remote, you get full power, like it or not.

If you never want to use ETTL flash or the Canon infrared wireless setup, consider the Vivitar 285. Be sure and get a "digital camera safe" HV series model. Guide number is 120. Price can be as low as $90 or so for new units.

Until I do get some radio remotes, I am working with infrared control of my 580EX-II using the ST-E2 unit. The only real liability of this is limited range, and spotty reliability. Good radio units just always work no matter where you put them, but the ST-E2 does support wireless ETTL. I also have an ST-E2 in my hot hands, which is an overwhelming advantage.

Lots of the "strobist endorsed gear" can be found at this link to Amazon.com.

Canon flash gear quick start guide:

You must master 3 different gizmos. The camera, the remote controller, and the speedlight. Ignoring manual flash flash for the present, here is how things go:

• Setting up the 580EX
Put it into slave mode (hold the zoom button down for 2 seconds to get a menu you can fiddle with the wheel and button-in-the-middle-of-the-wheel.) Once it is in slave mode, set the channel (I use channel 1 of 1 thru 4), and ID (I use A of A,B,C).
• Setting up the ST-E2
Make sure it is set to the same channel as the speedlight, and that the ratio light is off. Push the pilot light (which is also a button) and the flash should go off.
• Setting up the Camera
There should be a "lightning bolt" icon in the viewfinder indicating that the flash is good to go. If you are truly lazy, put the camera in P mode and let the ETTL do all the work.
• ETTL flash
Basically this works by firing two flashes, one is a low powered preflash that gets metered and used to determine the intensity of the real flash which follows almost immediately.
• High speed sync
The 580EX will sync with my Canon 20D at shutter speeds up to 1/250, which is typical for a modern camera. The 580EX offers a feature known as "high speed sync" that is claimed to work with any shutter speed. It works however by putting the flash in a "continuous pulse mode" for a time adequate to overlap in time with shutter motion. This somewhat reduces the effective flash output (essentially reducing the guide number and yielding 70 percent or so of the usual output). This also negates the usual ability of flash to stop motion, giving light output for a significantly longer time duration.

Manual flash

The 580 has a guide number of 190 feet when set to match a 105mm telephoto. (The 20D built in flash has a guide number of 43 feet). The guide number applies at a standard ISO (namely iso 100). If you are set to some other ISO, then you fiddle the guide number accordingly. Once you have the guide number, all you do is somehow figure your distance to the subject, then divide the guide number by that distance (in feet) to get the lens aperture. So as a simple example, say you are set to ISO 100 and your subject is 19 feet away, set an aperture of 190/19 = f/10 (use f/11), and you should be good.

Canon 20D modes

• Green box Turns your fancy camera into a point and shoot with interchangeable lenses. The camera makes all (and I do mean all) the decisions. Notice that in this and any other Basic modes raw capture is disabled.
• Basic zone modes These are just flavors of the above, and are all the modes on the other side of the Green box. The camera does what it thinks is right and will use the flash (and insist on doing so) if it thinks it needs to. I essentially never use these modes, but the "sports" mode does give handy quick access to servo focus, and "machine gun" multiple exposures.
• P The camera picks shutter and aperture, but leaves everything else up to you.
• Tv Shutter priority: you pick the shutter, and the camera picks the aperture.
• Av Aperture priority: you pick the aperture, and the camera picks the shutter.
• M Full manual, you pick everything.
• A-dep Like the P mode, but the camera picks an aperture that will give a depth of field to include all the focus points. I have never used this mode.

Canon 20D modes and flash photography

In shutter priority (or full manual mode), note that the flash will only sync up to 1/250 of a second. This can be a limitation if you are trying to dial down a bright ambient. My friend's Canon 1D pushes this out to 1/320 of a second for what that is worth.

Flash compensation yields the first level of control over the ambient / flash light balance. It gives you only 2 stops in either direction, and you are only controlling the flash (unless you want to be fiddling both exposure compensation and flash compensation. If I got to where I wanted to be doing that, I think I would just jump to full manual control.

The full manual setting allows you to whatever you want with the ambient light level, while still allowing ETTL to control the flash. A good bet to do this quickly is to take a meter reading in Av mode (or spin the dials to center the needle in M mode). This tells you where the ambient is at. Then dial it down as many stops as you want and set the flash.

Beyond this, run both the flash and camera fully manual and study the Strobist site.

Practice

Practice makes permanent. Not perfect, as is often said; practice only makes perfect if you practice the right thing. Practicing the wrong thing will just ingrain bad habits.

Nonetheless, if you shoot with flash often, fiddling with the gear will become second nature and you will be able to focus on actually making pictures. Also, with a digital camera, you are free to experiment all you want. And with a digital camera, you get almost instant feedback. This is all important with flash, since you can't just look and see what is going on with the lighting. Even experienced pros in the days of film would use polaroid to get on-site feedback about a flash setup.

Pure trial and error flash setup is refered to as "chimping". Random groping is perhaps where we all start, but experimentation (aka "chimping") still has its place and is used by the pros (though it is amazing how fast they get to where they want to get).