420EX vs. 430EX

[canons900]

I posted on another forum and no one responded yet......a little discouraging but none the less this is what I'm looking to do:

Shoot the following:
Kids indoors, parties, and fill flash outside.

Mostly bounce and fill flash. Don;t know much about this part of photography, hoping to learn more though since this forum is specific to flash.

Anyways, should I go with the 420 and use auto all the time. Or should I go for a little more power and the manual control of the option of the 430. I need to buy used so that eliminates the new 430. Money is tight and only so much in the paypal account.

I am using 2 Sigma lenses, a 24-60mm 2.8 and the 70-200mm 2.8 on a Rebel XT.

Will theses lenses be okay with flash units listed?

Is there something else, another unit I should/could be looking at that will do the job just as well?

Your feedback is appreciated.

Thanks for reading and helping me out. I have been reviewing older threads as well.

[simon_says]

For basic shooting, I think the 420EX will serve you just fine. You can do your coverage in E-TTL mode, and you don't really need the full manual control for your purposes. The 420EX will definitely be sufficient for simple bounce and fill flash.

[canons900]

I think that is the way I am going to go. Get the 420 and start shooting.

[Mark Alexander]

The 420 works just fine for basic eTTL flash stuff. And later if you add a 580 or ste-2 the 420 makes a great slave.

However, I would also suggest you look into a vivitar 285. It is cheap, makes for a good remote flash later, and will force you to learn manual flash. Just about anyone can point something on auto and get decent results. Learning it from the ground up will help you later if you decide to progress to multi light setups.

Mark