1st Day out in bright sunshine with my new 7D - any tips to overcome these issues?

Had my 1st Day out in bright sunshine with my new 7D. Shooting with C1 a heavily customised P program - Single shot AF. I shot with most options like ISO expansion, High ISO speed noise reduction,Highlight tone priority,Auto Lighting Optimizer all disabled. The built in flash did not fire.
I did not use a flash as I was using the 70-300 F4-5.6 L IS USM lens.

The 1st problem was the sun was very bright and any shadows on the subject were pretty pronounced. If I was using the Sony A77 I would have used HDR and as if by magic it would have toned down the areas over exposed and boosted the exposure of the shadowy areas - and bingo pretty good shots.
I'm shooting JPEG and really don't want to have to go to the trouble of RAW ....+ the work just when shooting a friend.

So what is the best way to get reasonable photos [with a minium of effort] any tips to overcome these problems much appreciated.
BTW I do have a 430EX II flash so thats a possibility - but maybe not at distances like that [e.g. a 5'6" woman filled the frame using a 70mm FL].

My second problem was I was firing quite a few flash shots off indoors later [Single shot AF - using wireless Flash with the 430EX II and the on board flash in a 8:1 ratio. All went well for some while then suddenly I kept getting "BUSY" and it would not fire for a while. I initially thought the buffer was full and needed time to 'flush out but then it recovered but I got the same thing a few minutes later.
I'm using a 60 MBPS Sandisk card and it was no where near full.
Is this normal?
I had previously taken about 1200 photos and copied and deleted those from my PC - could this be a problem i.e. should I have formatted the card to get max speed - yet again any views advice or help - much apprecaited.

Raw is the best way, you have so many options available to you after the shot that you don't have during the shot.

If you are shooting in sunny conditions and have shadows to deal with, you have to use fill flash, or at least reflectors. Very cheap and very useful...

Not sure regarding your flash use later, unless the flash needed time to recycle/cool?

I am not the best to talk about flash, but I can show you these...

With fill flash

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TeamSpeed wrote in post #14680492
Raw is the best way, you have so many options available to you after the shot that you don't have during the shot.

If you are shooting in sunny conditions and have shadows to deal with, you have to use fill flash, or at least reflectors. Very cheap and very useful...

Not sure regarding your flash use later, unless the flash needed time to recycle/cool?

Thanks I was hoping you were going to say that something like the 'Auto Lighting Optimizer' would have sorted my shadows in sunlight.

Hmm re the flash I assume you mean the onboard flash or could you also mean the 430Mk II [would the 430 be able to feedback to the camera a stop message. Stupidly I didn't look to see if the flash ready to fire sign was on. I'll check that next time].

Underexpose the background and use the flash to fill the subject.

Submariner wrote in post #14680516
Thanks I was hoping you were going to say that something like the 'Auto Lighting Optimizer' would have sorted my shadows in sunlight.

Hmm re the flash I assume you mean the onboard flash or could you also mean the 430Mk II [would the 430 be able to feedback to the camera a stop message. Stupidly I didn't look to see if the flash ready to fire sign was on. I'll check that next time].

You can use the onboard, but I would suggest getting a diffuser for it. The poor man's way is to take a ping pong ball and open it up enough to slip over the flash. The onboard flash directly at your subject may not give you results you like.

Thanks for the advice guys

for backlit, If you didn't want to use fill flash, you could try spot metering and some + exposure compensation, but this would blow out the background highlights