The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes

Show the Tattoo! Or, The Remarkable Rehabilitation of the Notorious Bubbles

AHH, THE POP-UP FLASH. Let’s talk straight, okay? It is the condom of on-camera flash. Use it if ya really gotta, right? I mean, that little winky dink just flat-out sucks as a light source. It’s handy in a pinch, and if you master the menu and make it serve as a driver for a handheld or remote wireless flash, then it positively cooks.

But as a light? Like I say, if ya gotta, use it. Or if you reaallly, reeeeaaalllly don’t like somebody, or if you get caught up in a rugby scrum of paparazzi and get knocked over and your SB unit goes tumbling and you roll into the gutter in between the horde and the limo and you look up desperately from that angle as the door ...