norman hammer dot com

After taking my fair share of harshly, unevenly lit shots from the internal flash in my Rebel XSi I had begun to lust after something more.  After doing some reading on the subject I settled on the Canon Speedlite 430EX II.  Last week it was added to my gear bag and a couple of days I got to use it.

I attended a birthday party in the side room of a dimly lit restaurant.  The room was dim enough where shooting without a flash would have been noisy at best and the room was too large for the weak internal flash.  It was time for the Speedlite.

Admittingly my flash knowledge ends after turning it on when its dark.  As such I left it on the auto ETTL II mode and bounced the flash off the ceiling, which working amazingly well.  Practically every shot was exposed well, with a balanced, soft light.

While I left most of the flash options set to the defaults I do have a compatible camera, allowing for me to control the flash options through the camera menu.  It was great being able to review and adjust the options in the same menu that I use to adjust the camera options.  It also spares me the frustration of trying to adjust setting on the limited LCD on the back of the flash.

A nice surprise was the auto focus assist beam.  In low light situations the flash can emit a grid of red light to assist in auto focusing.  This is leaps and bounds better than the flash strobe the internal flash uses.  It is far less distracting and much faster as well.

Overall I was highly impressed with this flash on its first real adventure and I look forward to learning more about its uses and playing with its options.  Here are a couple of photos from the party for you to get an idea of how well the flash works.