CameraPorn

Right out of the box, i was amazed by the performance of Canon’s 580EX flash. Being that i had only used the puny flash built in to my 30D, i realize i didn’t have much to compare to, but WOW was i impressed. The even lighting, the lack of shiny hotspots on peoples faces, the range… this thing is the real deal.

So far, i’ve mainly used the 580 in extremely low-light situations. In these situations, when using the built-in flash I faced a complete lack of natural light showing through in the final picture, crazy-annoying autofocus hunting, extreme shiny hot spots on peoples faces, and completely underexposed backgrounds. The 580 handled all of these problems like magic. You can control the angle and power of the flash that not only lets the natural light of the scene show through, it can help expose the background better, and provide overall more even light that reduces the greasy-face hotspots I’m sure you’ve seen in many-a-picture. As for the autofocus hunting, the 580 KILLS that problem with its own powerful autofocus beam that supplements the camera’s built in autofocus system. I’ve never had any low-light autofocus issues when the I’m using the 580.

With a little experimentation this has become easy and produces some excellent results. I highly recommend playing around with the swivel and pivot control you have on the flash head, as it can generate some really dramatic effects. I’ll go into some more details about some great methods I’ve found for getting really nice results in a future post.

Additional Resources

• Canon USA Website Product Page
• The-Digital-Picture.com Review
• Photo.net Review
• Canon Speedlite Flickr Group