I don’t talk gear very much since I think the photographer makes the picture and not the camera but I’ve been waiting for this announcement since a LONG time! Actually since 2009, when things started to be serious for ebphoto.

Canon announced it’s new flagship camera, the 1D X (strange name, I’m wondering why “X”). A full frame, 18 mpixels ISO 100 – 51,200 pro body camera (all specs can be found here). All I needed. One very interesting thing though: Canon finally realized that not everthing was about megapixels. Some rumors announced a 34Mpixels camera which is (IMHO) much much much more than 99,9% of photographers really need.

Anyway, my good old 1DmkIII will go to retirement pretty soon.

As soon as I get mine (probably not before march ) I will make a comparison to show how good that new camera probably will be. Stay tuned…

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I’ve been told recently that I wasn’t much talking about “gear stuff” on my blog. So, I tried to correct this, I hope you’ll like it.

For my style of photography, I absolutely need flashes. The size and power may vary with my needs.

One thing is for sure, for lots of small job, the Canon 580EXII is the ideal tool: lightweight, small in size, weathersealed and relatively powerful. The downside is its price (and in these days, 400€, especially when I have some other stuff to buy in mind, may be expensive).

So the idea came that since I shoot 95% of the time in manual (camera and flash) do I really need a speedlite with the E-TTL fonctionnality? After a quick search on the internet, I’ve found a small chinese company Yongnuo who’s selling speedlights that look very much like my Canon 580EXII speedlites.

Among the interesting characteristics, you have:

• Minimum power of  1/128th.
• Guiding number (GN) announced of 58 @ 100iso (which is identical as the Canon 580EXII or Nikon SB-900)
• two manual modes
• recharge after complete discharge of only 3 seconds
• one PC port sync (very important to trigger the flash from a distance!)
• one external power pack socket
• …

(Note: this image comes from the website www.speedlights.net – don’t hesitate to go to this webiste, they have tons of useful information!)

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