The external flash/hot shoe has higher light intensity, it can easily light up a whole room. The lens you use will not be a concern anymore since the range is pretty wide too, unlike the built-in flashes.

I'd like to use a flash occasionally - nothing too big, the same strength as what I have on my iPhone would be fine... Just to illuminate pics of my friends or out in bar. This means that the ambient has a chance to do its thing, and just before the exposure ends, the flash fires. This can help light trails make sense as the they will "follow" the subject rather than precede it due to the delayed firing of the flash.After hours of sleuthing around google, I have not been able to find information about the external hot shoe. Just saying though, we spend hundreds on a fancy modern DSLR, which can do impressive TTL flash things, and it seems a shame to hang on to an obsolete old flash that cannot do any of it. But manual flash can still work, and does have its own virtues, especially in the studio. Good recycle time? If the first shot is full power and the others look like a 1.4 of that, what is the use of the fast recycle time? So although it seems the A1 has a great recycle time in reality the engineers at Profoto made sure it goes to (what it looks like) a 1/4 power, to be able to keep up. At 1/4 power just about any decent flash will do pretty well (as your four year old TT850 did).

My comment is really for photographers that are starting out. Don't believe in all this marketing. Light is light. You can give Mario Testing a big window and he can give you a Vogue cover. What does that mean? it doesn't matter. If you need expensive gear to shoot, people will just hire you for your gear and at the end you have no value. Profoto have been tested by many actual users and even their higher end products have prove to be overrated. I think for a product like this, it's rather simple. Any sophisticated sync and metering function probably will not work, although it depends on the camera and flashes you choose. In A mode, set the manual aperture you want to use, which "depends", but often perhaps f/8 for direct flash or f/4 for bounce flash. Speedlight directly in a camera hot shoe. If a dedicated flash (compatible with the camera brand), it can do any flash mode (iTTL, Manual flash) that all the gear can do. Canon’s best and most expensive camera flash is the 600EX II-RT. It’s a formidable unit, with a flash power that’s not surpassed by any other flashes in this article.

The Best Camera Flashes

If you are relatively new to photography and have only digital cameras along with newer digital-oriented versions of major accessories, everything you have should be compatible and work properly together. But if you have been actively involved with photography for many years through the film-based era, you undoubtedly have older accessories designed for use with film cameras that you would also like to use with your new digital cameras. Often you will discover that these older items are not fully compatible with today’s digital camera electronics even if they were made by the camera’s manufacturer. We intend to clarify just how you can successfully and safely use your older accessories, in this case portable and AC-powered electronic flash units. p> A bit of light intensity control would be nice, either manual or e-ttl. Flash power maybe limited to 4 meters. Small is also important, because it is less impressive while shooting street life.

You can change the strength of the flash by eight different levels from high to low, though this is a lot less control than other units typically offer. Your built-in flash may have some benefits if you are using a standard zoom lens, but the flash is simply not optimal for your wide lens.