How useful is an external flash?

Started 9 months ago | Discussion thread
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chlamchowder
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How useful is an external flash?
9 months ago

I'm weighing whether to get an old Minolta flash for my Sony a580. However, I'm not quite sure how useful an external flash will be.

My intended uses:

  • Playing with high speed photography (flash on lowest power for short flash duration, and firing the flash with the shutter open in a dark room to freeze something)

  • Handling movement in very low light situations, where even ISO 12800 and f/1.7 fails to give an adequate shutter speed.

  • Miscellaneous studio style photography in a school photo club (not quite sure what that will involve, or even if a flash will be useful there)

Possible uses:

  • An oversized AF assist lamp

  • Lighting backlit subjects so I don't have to use fill light or tone curve adjustments (if HSS works correctly)

Here are my main concerns about an external flash:

  • Firing a flash attracts plenty of unwanted attention, and flash is prohibited in many situations.

  • The flash's light color often differs from the color of ambient light, making white balance adjustments a nightmare. Fumbling around with a batch of color filters (and remembering to change that every time the lighting changes) seems like a clumsy and error prone solution.

  • Adding light to a scene with a flash tends to change the 'mood' of the shot.

  • The effective range of the flash is limited

  • If an external flash proves cumbersome to carry, there's a good chance that it won't be with me when I need it

Based on this (and your experience), would spending $40-80 on an external flash be a wise decision? Thanks!

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