The Canon Speedlite 430EX flash lets me take advan­tage of a 1/200 X-sync speed, which means that high-speed shots such as these are now pos­si­ble in low light­ing con­di­tions. I picked one up this week, so most of my free time has been spent learn­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of an exter­nal flash unit. The tilt-and-swivel head means that I can bounce the flash off a ceil­ing to soften the light, or take advan­tage of the sur­round­ings, such as bounc­ing it off my stove (the pic­ture on the left) or off my fridge (the pic­ture on the right). There’s also a low-profile AF assist beam that’s a huge improve­ment over the seizure induc­ing on-board flash unit.

I decided to go with a Canon brand flash so I could have full E-TTL meter­ing sup­port (which fires an unde­tectable low-powered pre-flash for eval­u­a­tive meter­ing done through the lens) to match the Rebel XT shell. One of the coolest things about the 430EX is that a set of motors auto­mat­i­cally adjust the zoom range to match the lens, and it can be used as a slave unit that can be opti­cally (which also means remotely) trig­gered from a mas­ter unit for up to four light sources.

Even though there are tons of other acces­sories I’d like to have, such as a Sunpak hand strap (which would be a good com­pro­mise between the safety of a neck strap and the con­ve­nience of no strap), some Kenko exten­sion tubes (for macro pho­tog­ra­phy), or a portable micro­drive, I thought that a flash would cur­rently best serve my needs. This isn’t even to men­tion the options for some sweet glass, like a lens with image sta­bi­liza­tion, a tele­scop­ing range, or even some­thing from the L series which I’d have to put a sec­ond mort­gage on my house to afford. I think that I’m only begin­ning to under­stand how expen­sive a hobby pho­tog­ra­phy is.