Flash Gun Options

I was wondering about the purchase of a budget flash gun to see just how much use I'd get out of one, having never used one before other than the speedlight on top of my camera.

Has anyone any experience of one of these or could offer any comments as to the suitability of them? They look pretty reasonable money for what they do....

Nissin Di622

Not sure, but this will be an interesting thread for me, because I'm after something similar. I've heard that Nissin tends to be quite good though.

xx

Just out of interest, what are you trying to illuminate?

I try my hardest to 'never' use flash, i'd rather use a tripod, hold my breath, up the ISO etc before breaking out the flash

Alan.

I'd really like one for when I'm taking family or people shots really, more so than having time to sit and set up with tripod etc. A lot of time over the past couple of weeks whilst I've been away a flash would have been ideal

I concur with your comments tho, and for what I want to try and spend my time doing with a camera, I don't want to use flash hence the reason at looking at more budget models than Nikons own!

Thats interesting about never illuminating.
If you were doing a posed indoor portrait would you use lamps?

If you just want to have a 'play' then buy a really cheap second hand flash from ebay. I have bought three or four flash guns from ebay in the past, all for around £5, ok they are not TTL but they have a power settings, and they work just as well as my £200 Canon flash in most cases, the only reason I bought the Canon was because when I am doing jobs I have less 'experimental' time

Alan.

Not if I could avoid it, natural light from widows and a reflector would be a preferred choice, reflectors are so underrated, if you dont have one, get one. I've used mine outdoors to great effect.

Look at the example below, you can see the shadow on the tree, the left hand side of her face (closes to tree) should be in shadow too, but I used a reflector to shine the sun back across her face, this was the result, no flash, just natural light. It was a silver reflector, but because the sun was setting it has a nice orange glow.



Alan.