Equipment Lens/flash recommendations?

lol cheap shot! and it's not noise, it's film grain.

Yes, the radio remotes work a charm, but you need to be able to plug them into a pc sync port, which the 430 doesn't have, but the 580 does. Canon does have an infra-red trigger, but I don't think it's TTL and I don't know if you can change the power output of the slaves from the master flash. I might be wrong, since I have limited exposure to Canon flashes. By the way, PWs are wicked expensive. Bowens (calumet in the US) makes a set of triggers marketed as Pulsars in the UK. They work well enough, much better then the super cheap ebay ones, while being 1/2 the price of the PWs. I find them a reasonable compromise between price/range/reliability. But the level of optical communication between master and slave in CLS is just way cool. People have, in the past, laughed at my D200 because it has a pop up flash. That is until I did on-site, 2 minute setup, informal portraits using the pop up as the commander and the 2 SB-800's as the key and hair lights.

Canon or Nikon, flash technology is moving fast and opening up a whole new area that was previously reserved for heavy, expensive monoblock or studio heads. in many ways it's cooler then the megapixel race. Seems silly not to embrace it.

 

Well thanks for the advice on flashes. I think getting an external one will benefit me quite a bit, whether I go for a Canon or Sigma unit. I'm quite a novice in that department unlike with the lenses where I understand the technology quite a bit more even if I don't know every unit's quirks. All I really know about them is that the onboard one will allow me to take a sharper handheld shot in low light, at the expense of generally having very hard shadows and unnatural color tones.

So, assuming that I'm choosing between Canon's 430EX and Sigma's EF-500 DG Super (which is the closest thing I could find to what was mentioned a couple posts back) which are in the same price range, is there any reason I should choose one over the other?

 

On paper the Sigma looks to have a little more power. GN 165ft/50m vs the 430's 141ft/43m-both set to 105mm. The 430 has a little more spread-24mm vs the sigma's 28. The canon goes from 1/1 power to 1/64. The sigma looks to go from 1/1 to 1/128. Both are e-TTL II. On paper...I would have to go with the Sigma assuming the price is the same. But I haven't used either, so take that with a grain of salt. I would try and find a dealer and try them out. There is a Calumet photo over by the Cambridge Galleria, I was there 2 weeks ago and they had both, IIRC. Take the T over there with 4 AA's and ask to test them out.

Edit: I could have sworn you were in Boston the last time I looked, Firehed. Am I wrong?

 

Sorry yeah, that's the one I meant. Sigma do a cheaper one too, but the 'Super' is the one I've heard about. N.B. I've never even used either of these flashes, I'm just going off what people have said.

Basically the features of the Sigma compare well to the 580EX, which is over twice the price in some places. The downside is the build quality which is apparently lacking compared with the Canon. But if you're careful and you don't throw gear around, it should last just as long.

 

I work an not far away from Boston (Peabody - exit 45 instead of 46 on I95), but my location's been kinda up in the air for the last few months. I really don't know where the hell I am anymore (and I'm really getting sick of it). But that's a story for another day.

Anyways, if there are some real camera stores in Boston, I'll try to get in there sometime to check them out. My weekends have been pretty filled recently with househunting and all other sorts of nonsense along those lines, and the mall that's 15 minutes away only has a Ritz Camera which is really much more consumer-geared. I did find a Best Buy that had a 30D for sale so I was able to play around with whatever lens it had attached (24-105 L, I think, but it might have been that 28-135 I was looking into earlier) but either someone had messed up a setting or it doesn't like autofocus except in the newbie modes.

 

Sorry to hear you are so unsettled. I know it can be very......unsettling. There are a few good camera stores in boston, I just don't know them all. I needed a few clamps I can't get here, so I went to the calumet store in cambridge when I was visiting my sister. I will say that it was a nice store, and since they are nation wide, if they don't have it there; you can go online and get it or they will ship it from another store. But the people were busy and not all that organized. But at least they tried to help. If you go there, I recommend going to the website first, and write down their stock number. Just to be sure. http://www.calumetphoto.com/