> I've heard stories about the 550 producing some washed out results. > Even if that's the case, since it has quite a few manual settings you > can compensate for that, right ?
550 EX has worked beautifully with my EOS-3 for over 3 years now, I've used it with the off shoe camera cord, the ST-E2, another 550 EX, and it never fails to give me great exposure provided I haven't royally screwed up one of the manual settings. Case in point, I didn't realize to get 2nd curtain sync, one needs to set this on the flash even though the camera also has a CF setting for this, in fact for the 550EX/EOS-3 combo, only the flash needs to be set to 2nd curtain sync as it has precedence over the camera body, I found this the hard way trying to get pictures of aircraft landing at night..... > > I've also heard that battery consumption is greater on 550, i assume > because of the lcd ? Can u turn the lcd light on/off ? or is it always > on ? The LCD doesn't consume much power, the LCD backlight is defaulted to off, you have to press a button to turn it on, it will turn off by itself after a few seconds. Otherwise the only power consumption difference would be if you use manual settings on full power as the 550 has higher guide number and will consume more power to generate more light when compared to the 420 EX, laws of physics you can not change. There are 2,100 mAH NiMH AA size batteries commonly available now (just bought some Energizer brand from Home Depot hardware store for cdn$18 per 4 AA cell package), these are much better choice than the Bantam battery pack I used to carry around my belt with a cable to the flash and they are only 1.5 AH. > > At the moment, i'm not gonna use all the advanced features(wireless > etc) of the 550 but since i can find it at a reasonable price i think > it's more value for money and more future-proof. You cannot predict the future, but it's a safe bet. Regards, Ken * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
