So,

It’s looking like I’m getting a flash for my Canon dSLR for my birthday. Specifically, http://www.amazon.co.uk/565EX-ETTL-Speedlite-Flash-Canon/dp/B007NE5W2C

I’m thinking I’d quite like a remote trigger for it (my 450D doesn’t Master natively). Seems that this is a bit of a minefield.

a) does anyone have any experience / recommendations?

b) would it be more cost-effective to upgrade to a 550D or similar which, far as I can tell, has the ability to control the flash without an add-on?

Cheers in advance, etc etc.

Can you not use a slave flash to trigger of the flash ?

Other than that go to a descent camera shop and ask there
to what your trying to achieve before buying a new camera

I could, if I had one. My First Flash.

I could go to a camera shop, but I thought I’d ask STW instead. Odd, I know.

I’ve got some Yongnuo ones and they’ve been great.
RF602
A quick scan on ebay shows £35 for 1 trigger and 2 receivers.

Same as Richpips. Had them for a couple of years, cheap and reliable. Can also be used as a remote shutter release.

Normal triggers with a mount on the hot shoe are good. I wouldn’t see upgrading the camera as being an advantage really.

Cheapest good ones are Yongnuo RF602.

Cactus V5s allow faster sync speeds than others, which would be quite handy. (I’m on V2s and though reliable, take unusual batteries and only really 250-320 sync). Many now take ‘normal’ batteries.

If you can go a little higher in budget, the Yongnuo YN-622C look interesting because they support E-TTL (as does your flash).

Groovy. Cheers all.

Hm,

Could someone give me a TL;DR summary of what advantage the 622 gives me over the 602? I sort of understand it but I’m new to this and a bit hazy.

The 622’s support e-ttl, put simply you can shoot with the camera in manual mode to create the effect you require and the flash will modify the amount of light it outputs to give you a correct exposure.

dropoff – can you help with something I’ve been wondering. Presumably, the camera and flash don’t know how far away from the subject it is. Does it think it’s attached to the camera? Does that therefore mean that flash placement is best at roughly the same distance from subject as the camera is?
I can definitely see a use for E-TTL. I’d love to be able to bracket my exposures so that I can test different ambient/flash balances.

Those photos of mine on this thread often had very harsh highlights, that I had to recover in Lightroom. The histogram looked fine on the camera, but it was obvious as soon as I got home.

Hi Alex, I can only say about the kit that I use. The camera will force the flash to prefire, the camera then meters the scene and calculates at what power the flash should fire in order to correctly expose the scene. So it doesn’t matter what the relative distances between camera, flash and subject are. Hope that helps

Thanks dropoff – I’d totally forgot about the prefire! Makes complete sense.

Disappointed = I thought you had cracked and it was for your assault rifles