that's not what the II is about
the original E-TTL used to link the flash emission and metering to the (spot) of the focus area active at the moment of the pre-flash
Correct....
since it can easily drive to a disaster then the II enlarged the spot but also produced a new software capable (in theory) to compensate when the area right next to the focus point (now a bit bigger with the II) is a lot different.
Total nonsense. E-TTL II does not care about focus spots at all. I don't know where you got this enlarged spot from... it simply doesn't exist.
Because people didn't understand how to use E-TTL, (i.e. don't focus & recompose, unless you FEL first) Canon make a completely different system, that doesn't rely on focus point at all. E-TTL-II's compares the ambient light with the preflash light, and from that can distinquish foreground from background, and also compares it to what it expects from the focus
distance
I don't know of a big benefit (if none) coming from the distance reported by some lenses. the pre-flash still does all the work.
Then you apparantly haven't used it much... Distance information is a very important part of E-TTL-II, even in bounced flash. I noticed that when I accidently had my polarizer still on my lens... all my flash pictures got underexposed. Remove the filter, everything was ok.
With E-TTL this doesn't matter, because it just measures light. E-TTL-II however, knows from the distance information, how much light it
should get from the subject. That however, has the assumption in it, that there's no polarizer or ND on the lens. (Which ofcourse, you never have when you use flash...)
In principle, when used as a direct flash without modifiers, the distance information itself is enough to set the flash exposure. (Simply GN divided by distance!) E-TTL-II basicly extends this idea, so that it also works with bounced flash. Only breaks down when someone is stupid enough to leave his polarizer on the lens...
the best flash technology is still the auto thyristor that you can find on auto sunpak, vivitar, metz and quantum. There is no preflash and that alone is also a plus. But the main advantage comes with the fact that the sensor (thyristor) cuts off when the emission is enough. That will result in more predictable exposures ,
You're kidding, right? It mostly leads to predictable
wrong exposures. Almost all auto flashes overexpose the subject, simply because they can't distinquish between subject and background. And it's
impossible to expose both properly with one flash. Worse, they also don't know the field of view, so they typically add part of the scene to the metering that are irrelevant, or leave parts you that are relevant, depending on your focal distance.
Auto-flash basicly assumes that you're shooting a certain field of view, with a certain subject size, a certain background distance, and then gives a good exposure. Deviate from any of these assumptions, and the exposure is off. It's way more unpredictabel than E-TTL-II.
What typically happens, is that an auto-flash primairily exposes for the background, and hardly sees the subject. The photographer then adds FEC, to get good subject exposure, then another subject at the same distance from that background also get correct exposure. Basicly, you're just performing a manual flash setup then. Some people confuse that with predictabel exposure...
