Need help using 550EX with 420EX as slave

[clkgtr37]

I just got both flashes and want to see what the atvantage of two flashes is. Is there any techniques to using two flashes and what little tricks can i accomplish with two that couldn't be done with one? Also I bought a Sto-fen Omni-bouce for my 550EX, but not for the 420EX, will this make a terrible difference? Thank you for any help you ma have to offer.

Thank you,
Blair

PS.....Pekka, thank you so much for your reply to my metering question, I can't explain how much that helped me to understand my camera.

[philw]

;-) well the disadvantage is that as soon as you have one flash off the camera you can drop it on the floor, get it stolen, and generally complicate matters.

Personally I'm a bit peeved that I have to buy a 420 as a slave, which has an expensive zoom system, AF assist, and a bunch of other stuff you don't need if you're just after a slave. Canon: what's wrong with producing a small simple flash which works just as a slave. On the pluss side, dropping one of these from about 1.5m onto a tiled floor resulted in no serious damage; they're well built.

Is there any techniques to using two flashes and what little tricks can i accomplish with two that couldn't be done with one?


I've done a few shoots with the 550 on camera and the 420 floating about. I think this is about as complex as I want to get for walking about and shooting; more guns would be hard to shepherd.

You can actually hold the 420 in one hand and point it at the subject whilst using the 550 on camera in bounce mode.

Otherwise, if you have the time & location, you can easily use the 420 to zap background shadows, or even to back-light your subject. There are a bunch of web sites with general lighting guidance - the main difference between this and studio type stuff is that one of your lights is on your camera (as opposed to both being off).

Both guns default to group "A". Set the slave to group "B" and then use the ratio control all the time. This is the clever bit.... take a shot, look at the lcd, then adjust the ratio to give the result you need. Of course it's up to you which light you use for the key.

I have tried having the slave on a tripod and also just sitting it on the floor or a convinient table etc. Although you can get it precisely where you want it with the tripod I have found that it's more flexible without - the gun's got enough power to bounce from floor to most ceilings if you need it.

I have only used the pair indoors, where you generally don't have to bother twisting the slave to orient the sensor towards the camera. I understand from other threads that if you're working outside you'll need to do that rather more. The 550 test button flashes the 550 then the slave a second or so later, which is a good way to check the comms.

I note that setting the wireless stuff forces both guns to maximum coverage (24mm I think). With the 1.6 multiplier this would appear to be more diffuse than you need; you could manually zoom the 550 to get more reach if you wanted.

I'm not certain that the viewfinder "flash ready" signal covers both flashes - it comes on when the 550 is ready, but is the slave also ready then? You can tell because the AF emitter on the slave blinks, but I can't see how that would link back to the viewfinder

Also I bought a Sto-fen Omni-bouce for my 550EX, but not for the 420EX, will this make a terrible difference?
Dunno... I was wondering about getting one of those myself for the 550.