If I were to announce…

that Canon introduced the world’s best interface for flash control–a Speedlite interface that was big, colorful, and easy-to-understand–you would think it was news…right?  You might also think it was fantasy. Well, it’s real and I’m three years late in making that announcement. It happened in mid-2007, when Canon released the 1D Mk III camera and the 580EX II Speedlite. The world of off-camera flash should have shook back then, but I did not feel anything. Thereafter, with every new Canon DSLR annoucement, there should have been major aftershocks. We Canonistas have had a revolutionary Speedlite user interface in our hands for three years and no one is whooping about it (not even the marketing department at Canon). Are you still scratching your head trying to figure out what I’m talking about? It’s the ability to control every aspect of an EX II Speedlite from the back of our cameras–on menus that are big, colorful, and easy-to-understand.

I discovered this capability quite by accident about a year ago when I bought my first 5D Mk II and paired it up with my then year-old 580EX II. I literally tripped into the ‘External Speedlite Control’ menu while looking for something else on the my camera’s LCD monitor. So, for the past year, I’ve gone from being barely able to find the ‘External Speedlite Control’ menu to thinking of it as an indispensable part of my Speedliting technique. I’m sure once you come to understand the potential, you’ll see it as indispensable too. And, if you’ve never seen a good reason to upgrade to an EX II Speedlite, you’ll likely change your mind about that too. I sure have.

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