After a long struggle against any sort of flash photography, I decided to buy my first flash. Two days later, I bought my second flash and some really cheap wireless triggers.
Within five minutes of using the first flash in E-TTL mode on top of the camera, I was hooked. I shot indoors bouncing my flash off the ceiling and felt wonderment and joy at the results. In my (ongoing) amateur state, I had been a purist for available light. But trying to shoot indoors and hearing my lens clunk around trying to find focus just to end up with blurry f/1.8 shots wore on me over time.
Enter my new 430 EX II strobe. It shoots a laser on my subject and shows my lens where to focus. I can close the lens down to f8 or smaller and everything is so sharp. The flash opened my eyes and closed my aperture.
I decided not to waste any time and bought the second flash and some wireless triggers. A forty-seven dollar Yongnuo flash thing and some thirty dollar Cowboy Studio things later and I'm shooting wireless flashes. Sure, everything is manual now, but what better way to learn how to properly expose my shots? Bouncing a flash off the ceiling with perfect, automatic metering is great, but that's just one way to light something.
That being said, I'm finding off-camera flashes to be a bit of a challenge, but it's an exciting, wonderful, educational challenge.
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