When Canon announced their top-of-the-range flash unit, the EL1, I read the specification and thought to myself “looks nice but probably not worth the money”. It has taken from that announcement until this week for me to actually use one and, I’m slightly embarrassed to say, change my mind.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this is the first hot shoe style flash unit from Canon that I would be confident of using as a day-to-day piece of kit for editorial portraiture with a whole range of light modifiers and be able to leave my Elinchrom kit at home. It’s powerful, has superb recycle times and in both TTL and manual modes it does everything that I might want it to. There are tons of other bits of kit that are on the market competing in this space but I haven’t used most of them and so I will only stick to what I know.

Like every piece of equipment ever made it isn’t perfect so I’m going to quickly examine some of pluses and minuses.

SIZE | It’s big and it is heavy. With the battery installed it tips my scales at 692 grammes compared to the 600 EXII RT which was an already heavy 562 grammes with batteries installed. You can see from the picture above that the front of the flash is considerably bigger and that means that it doesn’t fit into some of the brackets that I use for attaching hot shoe flash units to various light modifiers. The EL1 takes up a lot of space in a camera bag but maybe not as much as the Elinchrom One that I think that it might replace in my thinking. It is also considerably lighter than the the Elinchrom which tips the scales at almost 1,500 grammes. Sitting an EL1 in the hot shoe of a Canon EOS R6 or R5 without a grip makes things a bit cumbersome but not unusable. On an R3 or a gripped R5 or R6 it’s absolutely fine.

POWER | The data sheet that comes with the EL1 does what all hot-shoe flashes do and measures power in the form of a guide number. According to that there is very little difference between the EL1 and the 600EXII RT. Where the difference lies is in recycle times. The EL1 is very quick and recycles in under a second following a full-power flash. The Elinchrom One is more powerful, faster to charge at a setting equivalent to the EL1’s full power. How much power is enough for your needs is something that each individual photographer needs to decide for themselves. In my experience the 600EXII RT has always been just about enough but the recycle times using 4 AA batteries has always been a small issue and adding an external battery pack has always been an option but has, once or twice, presented over-heating problems.

USABILITY | Having a hot shoe flash that can double as a location light compatible with light modifiers makes plenty of sense when it comes to kit choice and ‘operational flexibility’. Even with something as powerful and easy to use as the EL1 (and it really has the easiest menu and operating options Canon have ever implemented) attaching it to a stand with soft boxes and umbrellas is always going to be something of a compromise. No doubt the after market will come up with solutions but I haven’t seen anything compelling yet. Being that little bit smaller the 600EXII RT and the soon to be available EL5 can be used with plenty of accessories that are readily available. Of course, as a unit designed for attaching to stands and light modifiers, the Elinchrom One wins hands down here but I wish anyone trying to use it attached to a camera the best of luck because its weight and size make it something of a non-starter in my eyes. A lot has been made by others of the modelling light and lamp options of the EL1 but, as someone who rarely turns on modelling lights, it doesn’t make much difference to me but having the option isn’t ever going to be a bad thing.

PRICE | The EL1 is expensive by any comparison. The EL1 list price is £1,299.00 inc VAT compared to £799.00 for an Elinchrom One and around £699.00 for the 600EXII RT before it stopped being available from UK retailers. The price shocks don’t stop there. The new LP-EL battery that powers the EL1 comes in at £159.00 and, although it uses the same charger as the LP-E6 family of batteries found in so many of Canon’s DSLR and mirrorless cameras the LP-EL battery won’t fit into any of my after-market chargers. Add to that the cost (in my case) of buying new gadgets to allow me to attach it to my large selection of light modifiers and we are looking at a serious investment.

So there we have it. A quick comparison between three units that I have been using. I will always be grateful that I don’t have to choose between them but, if I were forced to, I would pick the EL1 over anything else I have seen or used because it does so much with such ease. I have often re-visited my thoughts on new bits of kit after a few months or a few years and maybe I will repeat that trick with the EL1. I’m pretty sure that when I move over entirely to Canon cameras with the new multifunction hot shoe and have access to the latest Speedlite Transmitter then more advantages to the EL1 (and EL5) will become clear.