thoughts on off brand flashes

I am looking into purchasing a flash for my xti and there is a huge price difference in the canon and the off brand flashes.
Bower E-TTL Flash for Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT XTi

Is one of the ones that I am looking at . This is one of the things that I believe that I may be better off buying brand but if you have had good luck with one please let me know. I would also like to know if there is a brand that you have had bad luck with.

My take on this unit...

I have been wondering how long it would take for a manufacturer (probably based in China) to come up with a rip off E-TTL flash for Canon cameras. It has been a long time coming.

I have no information regarding just how reliable this unit is nor do I know how accurate is the E-TTL exposure system.

There are a few bells and whistles which the Bower apparently does not have that a flash such as the 420ex does have.

The first is very important to me since I frequently use fill flash outdoors. The Bower apparently does not have high speed sync capability and therefore you will need to keep your shutter speed at 1/250 or below.

The Bower apparently doesn’t have the capability to be used as either a master or slave in conjunction with one of more flash units. This may or may not be important to you.

The need to adjust the flash manually for your focal length doesn’t bother me at all. I seldom shoot with straight-on flash except in fill-flash situations.

The price of the Bower is very appealing. However, I believe that I would be a more inclined to spend a bit more money and to buy either a used Canon 420ex or a new Sigma EF-500 DG Super. Both of these are established flash models, have high speed sync and can be used in a slave/master situation.

You should get years of use from your flash and amortizing the extra cash spent on the 420EX or the Sigma would probably cost you less than a dollar or two per month of use.

Spend the little extra and stick with a well known product... ie:Canon 420, 430, 580...

RPCrowe wrote in post #5475539
I have been wondering how long it would take for a manufacturer (probably based in China) to come up with a rip off E-TTL flash for Canon cameras. It has been a long time coming.

There are and have been many 3rd party or 'rip off' ETTL canon flashes. Pheonix, bower etc etc make 'lower end' models, metz and sigma the 'higher end'. I personally have been very happy with a metz flash on camera and use manual flashes off camera, they work well for my needs.

I would not hesitate to put an Alpine stereo into a Mercedes, but I would think twice about the Walmart special no-name brand. Same for flash units.

Bower = low end
Metz = high end

You should stick to Canon, Metz, and Sigma flashes.