small cheap flash

Hi, now I have my k200d, I am having to sell my other flash that went with my canon superzoom, it was a canon 270ex and it was great, small, neat and worked well, with bounce head. That is the only thing I am not happy with selling, but, obviously, it is not compatible with the pentax, so, once Ive sold it I will need to buy another flash at one point, and I would like to get something small again, with bounce head, just wondered if anyone can recommend something. Criteria, cheap, small, bounce head, I will try to look for used as Im only going to get about £50 for the canon. I have seen loads of cheap ones around on ebay etc. but not sure what I can use, thanks, jacqui.

If you use the flash in manual mode only, it can be used on the Pentax.

Hi, yes, trouble is, it has no adjustment on it so everything just comes out too bright, on the canon camera, you could adjust flash output in camera.Shame it hasn't got some sort of adjustment on it.

Hi Jacqui

I've been considering this one

http://www.jessops.com/online.store/products/79002/show.html

Reviews seem o.k. It might not be up there with the £200 flashes, but seems to be a good step up from the built in flash. Looks to have ttl metering and full automatic control and is under £50. I just want something I can use with an extension off-camera for macro.

You can do a little better than the Jessops price (Amazon, for example, are a few pounds less), but I have some spare Tesco Clubcard vouchers which makes it just under £25

Oh thanks, looking at a picture of one of these last night, it didn't look like it would bounce but it says it does, didn't realise that, thankyou for that I will look into it

Yes - looking at it again immediately after posting I thought it didn't bounce either, but it does. Must just be the flash insert itself that moves, not the whole head.

Just had a look at it properly, it looks perfect for what I want, thanks for that, now to go and investigate prices.

I think Amazon at £46.91 are cheapest unless you have some Clubcard vouchers to swap for Jessops ones - £5 of clubcard vouchers are worth £10 at Jessops.

Not if you know the basics of flash Just adjust the aperture on your camera. The formula is:

flash distance = guide number / aperture
or
aperture = guide number / subject distance

So assuming your flash has a GN of 28 (at ISO 100) and your subject distance is 7 meters, you set the aperture to f/4. Be aware: only subjects at 7 meter will be correctly exposed; closer will be overexposed and further away will be underexposed.

The advantage of automatic and p-ttl flashes is that they don't necessary have to blast full power; either the flash or the camera will measure and the flash will be switched of when the subject is assumed to be correctly exposed. In this case, your subject can be closer and camera and/or flash will take care of the exposure. The first formula above will now give the maximum flash distance and the shortest flash distance is usually around 10% of the maximum. So the range with the aperture of f/4 will be from roughly 1 to 7 meters and your subject can be anywhere in that range. Still, anything closer than the subject will be overexposed and anything further away than the subject will be underexposed.

The advantage of not having to blast full power is that the flash will quicker be ready for the next photo.

Guide numbers go up by the square root of 2 (1.4) for each full ISO step, so this same flash will have a GN of around 40 at ISO200 and 56 at ISO400.

Hope this helps a bit.

You can download most Metz manuals from http://www.metz.de//en/service-support/instruction-manuals/flash-units/mecablitz...

As well as their catalog: http://www.metz.de/fileadmin/fm-dam/bilder/01_tv-erlebnis/07_kataloge/Kataloge-2...

PS: numbers apply to direct flash, not bounced flash.

Thankyou for the advice, I will probably need to read it through a few times! but I will have a go with the canon flash and see if I can work it out

Thanks, didnt know about that, will have see if we have any

OK, in which case I will tell a bit more Please be aware this is mostly theoretical.

If you bounce, you will 'loose' light. It can not be predicted how much but the Metz manuals give a guideline to start with / assume 2 times, so your guide number will go down to 14 (at ISO100). It might be a bit of trial and error to get the correct exposure. Automatic and pTTL flashes have a definite advantage in this area.

The advantage is that a larger area will be evenly lit so there is some play in the earlier mentioned overexposed / underexposed distances.

And of course the shadows will not be as harsh.

Use M mode on the camera with the Canon so you have control over both aperture and shutter speed. You don't want the camera to decide on a long shutter speed because it's not aware of the flash.

The shutter speed hardly has no effect if flash is the main light source. The shutter speed will however effect the amount of ambient light and longer shutter speed allow to get more ambient light in. The fastest shutter speed that you can use is the sync speed which is 1/180 for the K200D; the camera will not trigger the Canon if the shutter speeds are faster.

Do NOT use auto ISO !

And know you know about as much about flash as I do

Some notes:
1)
Set the camera white balance to flash; I doubt the camera will do that automatically with that flash as it is not aware of it.
2)
Don't bounce against colored surfaces (unless you want that effect)
3)
Consider to build some kind of home made diffuser (you can search for diy diffuser). Useful if you want to flash outside (you can not bounce against the sky ) or when ceilings are high.

Thanks for the info,usually I have it on av, so of course, it was using slow shutter speeds, never thought of using manual and I dont ever really use auto iso, so Im alright there. Ok I will give that a try today, thanks,

Just had a go using manual, makes much more sense now worked pretty well, thankyou for that. I shall probably still get a compatible flash at one point to make things easier, but nice to know I have something I can still use for now. Its great to be part of such a friendly forum, where you can learn all this! thankyou everyone Loving the k2100d, by the way

Hi, managed to get the metz flash yesterday from park cameras (where my daughter works) had a try last night and it works very well, just what I was after. Thanks for that