Light Canon

November 18, 2007 · Filed Under Digital photography · 3 Comments 

Metz 58 AF1Nope, that’s is not a miss-spelling, ‘Canon’ refers to my Canon 400d, which now sports a heavyweight, in all senses, Metz 58 AF-1 flash unit, more about the ‘light’ adjective later on. I drooled over this lovely piece of kit some months past, and now I’ve managed to get my hot little hands on one. Yum, yum.

Some of my initial efforts with this piece of kit can be seen in the sausage posts, especially the photos of sausage making and the sausage tasting evening at my favourite local, the 442, here in Milan.

I have never had a good quality flash unit before, and so I cannot really compare the Metz 58 to anything. First impressions were positive, the build quality feels fine. It does not have a metal hot-shoe connector, but the plastic one feels good and sturdy, however, from what I’ve read, picking your camera up by the flash unit is not a great thing to do.

The controls, which I had read about, are indeed not all that intuitive and getting to the settings tends to involve quite a few button presses, but with more use and familiarity, I imagine that operating the thing will become quite fast. There are only four buttons, which, from a psychological viewpoint, means that this complex unit does not totally overwhelm. Apparently, the Canon high-end models are slightly on the fiddly side to use too. I guess at the end of the day, using these things comes down to whether you prefer Canon fiddly to Metz fiddly.

This nice Metz unit (I was about to write ‘nice little unit’ but it certainly is not little!), comes with a built in diffuser and a little white pull-out card for bouncing flash. In fact, you can also point the flash just about anywhere you like, because the head swivels round and moves up and down. This means that you can bounce the flash from wherever you think will make your photo look better, and gives you plenty of room for creativity. Read more

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