There are many joys in using the high-end Canon gear but flash is NOT one of them. You pay a fortune for evaluative metering and wireless operation but in the end you'll stick the flash on manual and use third-party triggers for anything that matters because infra red can't be trusted.

The new Canon 580EXII offers weather-sealing (shamefully long-overdue) and improved metering, but it will retail for around £400. On the other hand, Vivitar recently relaunched the 285HV. It uses decades-old thyristor technology for metering, you can pick one up brand new for £80, and most importantly IT WORKS. My first one arrived this week…

Vivitar 285HV
There are reliable workarounds for the quirks of Canon flash metering. I know them all, I use them all, and I resent them all. Nikon flashes have good automatic metering, off-brand flashes have good automatic metering, even the cheapest point-and-shoot cameras and disposables have good automatic metering. Canon has really let photographers down with their unreliable and inconsistent flash metering, and it's especially bad when you consider that Canon flashes are some of the most expensive units on the market.

Here's how you get a good exposure with the Vivitar 285HV: Stick it on your camera, select the appropriate colour-coded setting for your ISO and aperture, and take the picture. Done. Your images will be consistently well-exposed. Use bounce flash and they get better. Use the flash off the camera and they get better again. Wherever you put the flash, whatever you point it at, it gives you a correct auto-exposure, even when photographing objects that are mostly black or white which is the biggest challenge a flash will ever face.

Update: Originally there were some sample images here, including a few snapshots of my parents but it turns out that they don't want any photos of themselves on the Internet. I don't have time at the moment to re-write the post and prepare new samples so for now I've just removed them all. Sorry, I'll try to post some different ones when I get chance.

But the bottom line is: If you use Canon flashes then take this as my encouragement to put them away and get yourself a real flash. If you're thinking of buying a Canon flash soon then save yourself a lot of money and buy a 285HV at a fraction of the price. It has a manual mode so it will be just as useful for creative work, but with the added bonus of a good auto mode for fast work and fun shots.

As an aside, my picture of the 285HV at the top of this post is a fairly standard set-up for a product shot but I don't recall seeing any online tutorials explaining how the effect is achieved. It's not Photoshop, it's a lighting effect, and it's really simple so when I get time over the next couple of days I'll explain how to do it and post some behind-the-scenes shots.