Many months ago I wrote about my experiences with the top-of-the-range Canon EL1 flash. It was heavy, bulky and expensive but in almost every other way I found it to be very, very good. At the time there was a rumour of a smaller, lighter and cheaper alternative coming from Canon but it took a while to come out and a good deal longer for me to get my hands on not just one but two of them.

EL1 versus 600 EXII RT wasn’t really a great comparison and I found myself matching the big Canon flash against my Elinchrom One which was only ever going to be a contest when using them on stands and with light modifiers because there really isn’t much out there that can be compared to the EL1. The EL5, on the other hand, is a much more direct match for the older 600 EXII. They are much the same size (the EL5 is fatter at the head and I’ll cover that in a bit) and the weight difference isn’t too great with the 600 EXII coming in a 555g with 4 x AA Eneloop batteries loaded and the EL5 tipping our kitchen scales at 601g complete with the same LP-EL battery that was so impressive in the EL1. Both work perfectly with my much-loved ST-E10 speedlite transmitters and that’s where the similarities end.

The older flash has a synch port where you can plug in a lead which for me has always meant an Elinchrom Skyport receiver for those occasions when I want to mix high powered studio and battery flash with speedlites. The older flash has a port to plug in external battery packs to give faster recycling and longer batter life. The older flash came with a diffuser cap, a warm up filter and a tungsten balancing filter. The new one comes with none of that but, and it’s a biggish but, it does have a two-LED modelling or video lamp built-in. That’s why the head is so much fatter. The actual flash tube is of approximately the same size as the 600 EXII but the addition of the LED constant light source has made the front of the unit about 20% deeper. When used in a hot shoe the EL5 needs one of the later Canon bodies with the smart shoe so the R3, R6 MkII and few of the other bodies that I haven’t tried. It doesn’t work with the R5 or the R6.

Using this type of flash is rarely a first choice for any kind of work that I do but I do use them a lot and the three factors that tend to matter when bouncing off of walls and ceilings or sticking them into light modifiers are the maximum power output, recycle times and battery durability. This is were it gets a tiny bit more interesting:

Comparison method: using my trusty old Sekonic flash meter (purchased in about 1996 and used solidly until the digital era where it now gets used for show to impress clients and subjects) and at a distance of 2.8 metres I set both flashes to a manual zoom of 35mm, full power and pointed directly at the meter’s invercone. The flashes were sitting in the shoe holder that came with them. I did the test five times for each flash and the great news is that both the EL5 and 600 EXII gave 100% consistent readings. I went on to fire each 50 times and measured how the recycle times varied.

So that makes the EL5 approximately half a stop more powerful, considerably quicker to recycle and has an awful lot more in the tank if you want that speed of recycling to continue for a lot of flashes. Of course very few of us use these units on full power all of the time but when you need to do it, every second you save on recycling really does help.

The LP-EL battery that is used by the EL5 is brilliant. To put it into perspective it powers the EL5 (and the EL1) so well that it matches the 600EXII RTs and my even older 580EXIIs connected to an external battery pack and there seems no chance of overheating the tube either. On the downside the LP-EL battery is expensive when buying a spare and the flash doesn’t come with a battery charger. I guess that Canon had assumed that the overwhelming majority of EL5 buyers with have an LCE6 charger from one of the many Canon cameras that came with LP-E6 series batteries and chose not to supply a charger with the flash. Bad news here – none of the four different after-market LP-E6/N/NH chargers that I own will work with the LP-EL. My only means of charging them is the LC-E6s that came with my cameras which is a bit rough on anyone who only has R3 bodies. If you are reading this Canon – maybe a way to charge using USB type C would have been a better idea and if any of the after market battery manufacturers is reading this maybe make sure that your LP-EL equivalent does this.

Like almost every comparison you try to make between new and old kit there’s a chance that the older unit is a bit tired and isn’t performing as well as it did when new. Anecdotally the recycle times are as good as I remember them when I got them and the batteries are in great condition and so I doubt that age has much to do with it.

Importantly, the quality of the light is indistinguishable between them.

My last point of comparison is about the display and menus. Simply put the EL5 has evolved quite a long way. The display is really clear to read and the menus are very simple to navigate. Considerably clearer and simpler than those on the 600 EXII, which in their day were market leaders.

So is the Canon Speedlite EL5 worth buying? Yes. It’s better in almost every way than the 600 EXII RT (not that you can buy one new anywhere any more) and if you are lucky enough to own cameras with the new style Canon hot shoe you will be well-served. It’s funny because when the EL5s arrived I wasn’t particularly impressed. I started to change my mind when I realised that the recycle times were better and I was really impressed when of them bounced down a long flight of stone steps inside Canterbury Cathedral and survived with not much more than a small dent and the tiniest of cracks – they are tougher than they look and a lot tougher than some of the third party brands that some of my colleagues have bought.

Signed, an EL5 convert…