*Flash*

On December 31 I ordered a flash from B&H photo and received it on January 11th. No taxes, no brokerage charge, etc from Canada Post, which was very nice. What kind of flash? A fancy pants Pentax AF540 FGZ TTL?

Not quite.

That flash here in Canada is $500. I could have picked it up from B&H for $339 plus shipping, which is a pretty good deal. No, I went a little cheaper... well actually a lot cheaper. I had my choice narrowed down to either the Vivitar 285 or the Sunpak 383S. I decided to go with the Sunpak. It was $10 cheaper than the Vivitar ($79.95 vs. $89.95) and offered a bounce and swivel head whereas the Vivitar only offers bounce.

Yes, I am quite pleased with my purchase. I figured that to learn how to do flash photography I should start with a more manual and basic flash (just as I started in the SLR realm with the Spotmatic II) instead of one that does everything for me. So far so good. The Sunpak does allow for some "auto" settings where you set the aperture on your camera and the flash is supposed to be able to sense when it has used enough light. I'm not sure if it's 100% accurate, but does seem to work ok.

I also ordered a "poverty wizard" from gadget infinity this week. It's a cheap radio transmitter for doing off camera flash work. It was $37 shipped and should be here soon (I would like it to be tomorrow, but it is coming from Hong Kong). I'm really looking forward to getting that unit and getting even more creative with the flash.

As I get more involved I'll update. For now I'm just having fun being able to take pictures in low light without having shaky results.