speedlite

One month in with the Canon EL5 flash
The oldie but goodie 600 EXII RT on the left meets the EL5 on the right.

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.

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Canon’s flash evolution

When I switched to Canon cameras from Nikon in 1995 the one thing that I missed from my old F4S cameras and my old SB25 flash units was the accuracy and reliability of the Nikon TTL flash. Canon, with all of their promises for the EOS1N and Speedlite 540EZ combination just couldn’t quite match what I had left behind. I have no idea how Nikon managed to get their off-the-film-plane metering to be so good but it was very good indeed.

Coincidentally, it was about this time that I started to use high quality battery powered lights. The Lumedynes that I took delivery of in 1996 changed my professional life and TTL flash became something that I used when I absolutely had to.

Fast forward to 1998 and the arrival of the first decent digital cameras we had (the Kodak DCS520/Canon D2000) and flash took a big backward step. (more…)