Talk me in or out of the 550EX!

Hell, it took me that long to find the feet/meters switch.

---Bob Gross---

What switch is that then??
I hadn't planned on looking at the instruction book for at least a week..

Maybe we should make this a test for each new 550EX owner.

I suppose Canon wanted to put a switch for feet or meters somewhere near the electronics, but they wanted it to be sort of out-of-the-way. It isn't the sort of switch that you will be changing several times per day. Look really hard inside the battery compartment.

---Bob Gross---

Battery compartment? Wassat?

If you do not upgrade your 10D shortly (from ETTL to ETTL II), you may also consider Metz:

http://www.metz.de …onics/empfehlun​g.142.html

I will try Metz myself some time later as I won't have ETTL II for quite some time.

When I do upgrade, I will be keeping the 10D for a backup or secondary camera. The Metz 54 MZ4 ranked very high on the report I listed in my first post and it's only a bit more $$. Does anyone here have experience with this flash on a 10D?

The Metz may well be the best flash of all but the Canon adapter has not yet been released for the 20D. When that happens I may look at the Metz myself. Even if it works now with the 10D, if you plan on getting a 20D you won't be able to use that flash correctly.
For now I use a Sigma, but the 580EX is next on my shopping list.

Lou

I went to my local camera store (oriented towards pros, which I am NOT) to buy the 550ex for my 10D and they would not sell it to me. They said I would hate it because it doesn't really work well--very inconsistent flash results. They said I would just end up bringing it back. But the comments above seem to show people are happy with it. What do you think gives?

Get it you won't regret it. Range, accurate, features galore, high speed sync nice, and re sale price. Read the manual!!! I have never had a problem with this flash that was not due to my own mistakes.

cheers
Tom

If you spend only about two minutes trying to learn it, you may get very inconsistent flash results, and that would correlate to the way that local camera store guys work.

OTOH, if you get one, read the manual, practice, read the manual again, practice more, read some here, practice more, etc... then it gets much easier to handle. I would never think of trying to shoot a wedding without one. Well, actually, I take a 420EX along for backup, and there was only once when I pulled out the backup. On my 550EX, there is a little wide-angle diffuser screen that pulls down if you are shooting wide. That little item was just slightly pulled out, so the 550EX thought that it was fully pulled out into wide mode, so it changed the zoom setting on the flash for wide. Of course, I was not intentionally shooting wide, and my long lens did not agree with what the flash was trying to tell me about wide, so I saw this discrepancy. To be safe, I removed the 550EX and used the backup until I studied the wide-angle diffuser screen position and changed it.

That is the kind of stuff that you can get into. There is a lot going on inside the 550EX and its interaction with your camera, and you have to keep up with it.

---Bob Gross---

This wedding reception is the end of November. I realize I need to learn to use it, but if the 550EX is that difficult to use that I have to read the manual over and over, that concerns me. The Metz claims to be simple. Is it when compared to the 550EX?