I recently bought a Speedlite 270ex and I didn't see a full review, so I figure I'll add mine with some photos for reference.
I'm a journalism student in college and before I got into digital photography I was a film guy. Recently got into digital photography after borrowing one of the school newspaper's Rebel XTi's over the summer, and finally I bit the bullet and bought a used Canon 1D classic. Slowly, I've been building up on my own equipment. I do club photography on the side, it's not prestigious or anything, and I've had a couple of gigs my way. Since the 1D has no flash I had to borrow a 580EX from school while I saved up some cash. I was already familiar with the 580ex and shot something like 10 events with it, switching from that to a 270 was a bit of a shock.
I ended up going with a 270EX mostly due to a tight budget, but also because of weight and bulk. The 580ex on my 1D's tank-like body is a bit too much on my arm after shooting a whole night, and battery life on regular AA batteries sucked. It was sometimes too much flash for a night club event or similar, I even got a couple of complaints thrown at me because it was too bright. I was already considering a 270EX when I began searching on here, and saw everyone either suggested the 430 or 580.
On to the point, I gambled on the 270 and gave its first field test yesterday and was pleasantly surprised with its performance. Reading everything here, I expected a pop-up flash from a Rebel on a shoe mount with disappointing performance. I actually got around the same performance as the 580 with light bouncing for this type of scenario. I'm not saying the 270 is brighter or anything, but that the 270 gets the job done without the extra power or bulk.
It weighs about as much as my 50mm 1.8, nearly the same size. On my heavy 1D it's perfect. It won't tilt left or right, but its really not that big of deal (at least for me) to get some light to bounce off a wall. It's also powerful enough to light up any amount of subjects in a dark club,and in last night's shoot, the 15 foot ceilings weren't an obstacle.
Here's the night club from last night, for reference. Ceilings were about 15 feet high with the bar area about 40 long and 25 wide give or take a few. Lighting was scarce except for two dim tvs, a few lights. Mostly dim.
As far as bouncing goes, I didn't have any problems pointing the flash 90 degrees up and I got enough light to the DJ fully lit up.
Bouncing 70-90 degrees to my right with the camera tilted to a wall around 10 feet away (I think.) This was a bit easier in my experience on the 270 than the 580, where you have more control but more room error. It was about as straight forward a can be and delivered fast results.
Or even outside on the sidewalk in front of the club. Picture is a bit out of focus but I wanted to share for demonstration purposes. The walls were close by, but everything was lit up enough that it fully exposed the shot.
Even with the flash somewhere around 70 degrees up it was still sufficient enough to get enough light at ISO 800 on a sidewalk.
I even had enough to get a 8 frame burst with the flash upwards for a .gif. I bought this flash as a kit from Adorama that came with 4 rechargeable batteries and a Sto-Fen Filter. The filter feels cheap. But with the flash pointed up and a filter on, it spread the light enough to be almost a bit too dark but definitely not too bright or intense.I don't do a whole lot of fill-in flash or daytime flash shooting, but for night life photography it worked very well. I felt I even got better results from the 270 because it wasn't as bright and didn't wash out all the colors with its intense light and a bit more straightforward, but maybe it's just me. Operations are obvious, lock the flash in the shoe mount and slide the flash on and it's good to from there.
The weight and size was really attracted me to the flash, and I honestly could not be more happy with the 270. Living in the bay area, walking around with clunky camera gear was a bit troublesome and for the longest the 580 was the biggest thing in my bag, but not anymore. It might be a different story to those with a smaller body camera like the Rebels/50D/5D/7D, but as far as night time results indoors I can say I get about the same results with the 270.
For a club and nightlife photographer, this is your best friend. If you're a nomad roaming around Tibet with a camera, you're set. Not to say a 580/430 isn't, you'll probably get more use out of one of those but with my budget I couldn't afford one.
I hope this is helpful to anyone looking for the right info, and I guess I was just on a good photo high that I felt the need to share my results with you guys. If you guys need anymore photos or anything, just let me know.
-Abe
