Canon CP-E3 compact battery pack

would purchasing the CP-E3 pack be a good idea for flash-hungry situations such as event coverages?

Umm, yeah.

Perhaps more a necessity than a good idea. Depends on how many shots you take, how much of them are flash... The battery pack gives you oodles of reserve power and pretty quick power cycling.

If you have rechargeable batteries now and a spare set or two you could probably go without.

I just covered a Pre-Oscar event last night. Had my good ole CP-E3 with me, and was popin' like craaaazzy.

Just make sure you use NiMH, and not Akaline cells in them. Recharge time is 1.3 sec on a full pop.

And that's down from around six on the internal batteries. Not too slack!

It make the recharge time really short, like DN says less than 2 sec for a full charge. Since I rarely dump all the power it's usually pretty much instant. Be careful doing a lot of pops in a row, you can burn out your flash head. There's a guide in the Canon manual.

If you use a bracket, a grip, and the CP-E3, be aware that they don't fit together well. You have to attach it to your bracket somehow, the cord's not long enough to mount on your belt, plus it'd probably get tangled too. I have a Cp-E3, I do a lot of weddings, and i've never needed it - I prefer to take one shot than shoot and prey

I shot a 5 hour 50th wedding anniversary, multi-family group shots and non-stop candid shooting, with mine last month and I couldn't have done it without the battery pack. Maybe I'm just shorter, but I don't have any problem at all clipping it to my belt and using it, without a flash bracket, otherwise it's velcro time. Well worth the money spent.