You guys are probably thinking that all I've been doing lately is work on my shop and it's power tools. Actually, that's not quite the case. As I've previously discussed, my brother somewhat "out of the blue" sent me some cameras, and lens adapters. Then really out of the blue, sent me a couple of Wide-Angle/Fisheye adapters Nikon made for their fixed-lens cameras. One in particular, the FC-E9 which gives the cameras a 35mm equivalent of an 8mm Fisheye lens is really astounding! Here you see it mounted on the rather smallish CoolPix 8400, but it's really big mounted on the CP 8800! Anyway, as much fun as it's been playing with these things.... and let me tell ya, they are a HUGE hit with the 7 and 10 year old crowd, what I'm really doing is trying to get these cameras integrated into my digital photography life. So far, the 8400 with it's somewhat more compact body and 28mm (35 eq) lens is winning this little battle.
As I become more and more reliant on it as my "around-the-house" camera, one thing is very apparent. I really don't like that flash! Not only is it weak, it's also poorly located.
Of course, I could always go with this solution.... maybe not. That's Nikon's SB-600 i-TLL flash mounted on the CP8800 there. Trust me, you really don't want to see the "head-on" view of this. It ain't pretty. And with the hotshoe of the CP8400 in the corner, it would be even more ungainly on that camera. Oh, yeah.... that's the smaller of my two i-TLL flashes. It would be a LOT worse with the significantly bigger SB-800! I could go with the smaller and almost balanced SB-50 on there, but that flash doesn't take advantage of the newer i-TLL flash system that's not only baked into my DSLRs, but the 8800/8400 as well. What to do?
The answer is this little guy. Variously known as the Sunpak RD2000 or Quantaray XLF-50, it's small, light, and it bounces. Why not the little Nikon SB-400? Well, there is that $35-50 difference (although the Nikon is more powerful), but I also have a little secret. As most photographers are aware, Quantaray is a "house brand" of the Ritz chain of camera stores. They sell all manner of stuff using that brand, but the actual product is made by someone else, such as Sigma for many lenses, and in this case Sunpak for this flash. However, that's not the important part. It's been well publicized that Ritz isn't doing very well, and that they've gone through several rounds of store closings. What it mean is that their distribution centers often have to dump stock and these things will appear on the "secondary markets" such as eBay at a steeply discounted price. In this case, the XLF-50 can be pretty regularly bought at $50 or so. That's somewhat less than half the price of a SB-400.
I'm very OK with using a generic at that price-point!
Oh, and did I forget to mention that this flash actually bounces, vs. merely rotating the reflector like the SB-400?
Did I also forget to mention that the hotshoe foot rotates completely inside the flash body to make it that much more compact and easy to carry.... say in a pocket? No, it's not very powerful with a guide number of 20, but that's at ISO 100, which means you can pick up 2 more stops buy simply shooting at 400. On the plus side, it only takes 2 AA batteries and is quite the lightweight at 100g w/o batteries. Come to think of it; this thing is so compact, it might also make an excellent companion no only to my stable of CoolPix cameras, but to the D50 and most intriguingly the Panasonic GF-1 as well!?!
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